


Make Amends With All My Shadows

by deathmallow



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: AU, All Aboard, F/F, F/M, Gen, garcy, god help us all, none for you emma, oh look some angst, or ua maybe, post 2x10, rittenbitches inc, season 3 ahoy, sloth burn, time team bonding, time team healing their wounds ftw, time team's back all right
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-11
Updated: 2018-11-20
Packaged: 2019-05-21 02:43:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 28
Words: 239,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14906831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathmallow/pseuds/deathmallow
Summary: Post 2x10: wherein Emma decides to meddle with Flynn's timeline to help bring down the threat to Rittenhouse, and the Time Team all have to face their own scars and shadows in the months post-Chinatown.  Season 3 ahoy and #SaveRufus.





	1. 3x01: First Amendment, Second Chance (Denise: Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, June 2018)

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place post 2x10. "Looper", "On the Bright Side", "Round and Round", "One Good Turn", and "Open My Eyes To a New Light" are compliant mutual fic-canon for this story, and may be referenced, but aren't strictly necessary reading.
> 
> Title is from Of Monsters and Men's "I of the Storm".
> 
> Warnings for language, sexual content, violence, and discussions of harsher historical realities.

The Lifeboat popped into the old barn, kicking up a few small puffs and whirlwinds of dust, the whoosh of air snarling Denise’s hair, which provided a welcome breeze in the late June heat. She hadn’t forgotten how the greater Chesapeake region got so sticky and humid in summertime compared to the California coast. At least here, five miles from Gettysburg and tucked away in the valley with the ridged spine of the green, rolling mountains in the distance, it was slightly cooler than the Potomac region was, but menopause made anywhere in summer miserable to begin. Not like stress made the hot flashes any better, at that. "You’re running yourself too hard," Michelle said over the phone last night. Trouble was, they all were. "Are you still taking your meds? It’s been a month, and you should need a refill by now."

Ten thousand other things to worry about, so that had slipped to the bottom of the list. Of course Michelle had to remind her. "No, I’m out, but I have an agent I need to take in tomorrow for a follow-up on an injury. I’ll get them to write me a refill then."

"Promise?" 

"Michelle, _priya_ , I promise." She’d talked to Mark and Olivia, assured them that she hoped she’d be home soon, knowing it for the lie it was. She’d called Johns Hopkins and dutifully made her own appointment. 

The door spun open and the four of them climbed down, eighteenth century clothes a bit blood spattered, and her heart started racing at that. “Are you--”

“Just a tavern brawl. It’s not our blood,” Wyatt said, shaking his head, and looking away as he made to walk past her, presumably to head off to his room again. Wanting to be alone with his thoughts, as he so often did these days. Jiya glanced back over her shoulder, as if still hoping for Rufus to climb down from that hatch behind her. 

Lucy, holding Denise’s gaze, gave a nod. “We figured it out. They were after John Peter Zenger--he was a publisher. Printed criticisms of the royal governor of New York later in 1733. Gets arrested, tried for libel, and eventually was cleared by proving that it’s not libel if it’s true.”

“In summary, he kicks off the very fashionably American ideal of thinking it’s both good fun and honorable patriotism to criticize your government overlords,” Garcia joked. But she noticed how he leaned heavily against the Lifeboat after descending the stairs, skin pale and forehead beaded with sweat that couldn’t have come from them being in a New York February. Face lined with strain, shoulders set too tight beneath that wine-colored frock coat: yes, he was obviously in pain. 

He probably shouldn’t have gone on the mission--not with that arm, not so soon. But he’d said he could, and with them jumping into an unknown situation, two soldiers were clearly better than one. She should pull him from subsequent missions for at least a few weeks, for his well-being, and if he wasn’t totally solid and healed up, that could be a critical liability to all of them if his shoulder gave out at the exact wrong moment. But she wasn’t sure she could afford to do so. Garcia at 80% or so was still the best--only--option she had aside from leaving it all in Wyatt’s hands, and he obviously was in no shape mentally to carry the whole load himself. God, the brutal choices of being a federal agent sometimes. Hopefully he hadn’t messed up the shoulder more. 

There had been no time this mission, but she should at least demand to see him shoot, and make sure those weakened muscles were recovering well enough to let him loose with a gun. If his right arm wasn’t solid enough for him to hold the gun steady to take the shot, especially a heavier and unreliable pre-1880s firearm, _that_ was a definite liability. She’d been unable herself for a couple of weeks after Reagan, and she’d only been lightly clipped on the outside of her arm, not shot in the chest. 

“Rittenhouse tried to start a riot in the tavern,” Wyatt offered gruffly. “Sleeper was all ready to stab Zenger in the confusion. We got arrested along with a dozen others, unfortunately, and that cost us another, what, 18 hours?”

“So many lice in that jail,” Lucy said with a shudder. “So, so many.”

“Aw, cheer up, at least in only 18 hours we couldn’t die from typhus,” Garcia quipped. Wyatt glanced at Lucy as if to confirm that.

“If you’re not feeling well over the next few days, tell me,” she said, her tone making it obvious she would brook no argument on that front. “Days?” she asked, glancing at Lucy, trying to confirm. Not like typhus was something in her own database of knowledge.

“I’m...really not sure,” she said awkwardly. “I know histories of epidemics, but the specific epidemiology…”

“It’d be a week,” Garcia said coolly. “Maybe two. You’ll have a rash first.” He shrugged, glanced away from Lucy. “We saw it in Somalia, Syria too in some of the refugee camps. But at least it’s easily treatable with doxycycline.”

Trying to cut through the awkward moment, Denise told them, “All right. It was unpleasant, and we’ll monitor you over the next couple of weeks in case. But you’re back, and I’m glad you figured it out. And that you’re all OK.” Not that any of them were OK. Not really. Not with the missing space where Rufus used to be.

The silent moment hung there, all of them not sure what to do or say next. It had been like that since they got back from Chinatown. “I’m gonna get back to work on the Lifeboat,” Jiya said, nodding. “Lucy, want to come help get me out of this?” She nodded to her dress.

“Of course.”

“I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Rittenhouse jumped while you were gone,” Connor told them. “Probably activated the sleeper and then scurried to the Mothership to go do some more damage.” 

“We can’t chase them for twelve hours at least,” Lucy said tiredly. “We need to recharge.” Denise wanted to say it wasn’t only the Lifeboat that needed to recharge.

“Gee, it’s really too bad someone just handed Rittenhouse a Mothership with unlimited jump capacity,” Wyatt said, glowering at Garcia, who didn’t visibly react. Denise looked at the two of them, uncertain what was meant by that. Mothership with unlimited jump capacity? What the hell was he talking about? 

“Yeah, well, with friends like you, Wyatt, turns out we apparently really don’t need enemies,” Jiya muttered darkly, yanking at the ties of her deep purple cloak while looking pointedly at Wyatt. Wyatt flinched, and looking at the other three still in their colonial garb, looked as if he’d say something, but then closed his mouth, nodded, and turned to go.

“Enough,” Denise said, not loudly but with the tone that would brook no argument. They couldn’t all go on like this. She’d thought that future Lucy and Wyatt showing up had helped bridge the gap by showing them that Wyatt had worked his way back to being a trusted teammate and friend, but apparently it was only a Band-Aid slapped over a festering infection. “They jumped to Baltimore, 1975, and then 1993 and 1996, then back to 1975 again. Then back to Los Angeles, 2018. All in quick succession.”

“All recent,” Lucy said, brows drawing together in concentration. “Which means it’s likely something to do with one of us. Wyatt, would those dates mean anything to...to Jessica?”

Wyatt turned, looked somewhere past Lucy’s left shoulder as he answered. “No, Jess...never left Texas until after we got married. She didn’t have any people that far north either. I don’t know why she’d be interested in Baltimore. Makes no sense.”

It was Garcia who broke the silence, lifting his head and looking directly at Denise, something bleak and empty entering his expression. “You read my personnel file when this all started. Tell me, have I ever been married?”

Of course she’d read Garcia Flynn’s jacket when she needed recruits for this project. He’d been perfect. Impeccable service record, a bevy of modern languages, interest in history, and a trusted NSA asset. But strange that he’d put it like that. They’d talked enough over the last two years. She liked to think that they’d gotten a little closer than her simply being his supervisor familiar with his file. Like the rest of them, he was a friend--no, _family_ , like she’d told Connor--not just an asset she managed. She couldn’t help but look at him quizzically. “No?” Listed next of kin was a half-brother, Gabriel Peter Thompkins. Twelve years older than Garcia, and an architect living in Paris. Saved by Garcia in 1969 as a six-year-old child from a would-be fatal allergic reaction to a bee sting. Houston--the Apollo 11 mission. She’d reprimanded him and Lucy for going off-mission on that one and taking a side trip, but her heart really hadn’t been in it.

He didn’t have a wife, and she wouldn’t say it in front of them. Nobody had wanted to push them too much and wreck the whole thing, but one of the bets in the bunker before that Chinatown debacle was on exactly how long it would take Garcia and Lucy to stop doing their awkward dance, and when the ever-decreasing, tightening spirals they turned around each other would finally meet. Especially these last few months, now that she and Wyatt were apparently through after Jessica’s return. Rufus had joked that when it happened, Denise had better move those two to a hotel for a week and let them get it out of their systems so the rest of them wouldn’t have to worry about the noise. 

He laughed, a guttural and wrenching sound, closing his eyes for a moment and shaking his head. “Of course.” Eyes opening again, he lifted his left hand, tapping his ring finger with the index finger of his right hand. She spied the thin band of a wedding ring there. _Oh, hell. Something changed. What, and how big is it?_ The last Rittenhouse bomb that happened, she’d ended up with Wyatt bulling his way into the bunker with Jessica, and look how well that all turned out. “Looks as though we figured it out. I...I need to run a name. Please. Find out whether she’s...alive or dead or...never existed.”

So Garcia was--had been--actually married. And apparently, she’d just disappeared. Her heart twisted, hard, thinking of Michelle, of those photographs she’d put into the Lifeboat in Lucy’s care, the desperate fear that she’d lose them. Thirty-five years of hope and unbearable longing and fear all at once, simply waiting after 1981. She looked at him for a long moment, seeing the agonized tension running through him galvanizing him through the exhaustion and pain, and nodded. “Garcia, you come with me. Let’s go figure this out. The rest of you--get some rest. That includes you, Jiya. It’s after midnight. The report, and work on the Lifeboat, can wait for later.”

Nobody pointed out that it was after midnight for her and Garcia too, obviously sensing that wasn’t an argument that would fly. Garcia turned to Lucy for a moment, bent enough so that he could say something right in her ear, and said something in a low murmur, pointing back at the Lifeboat. Lucy nodded, scrambled back up the steps, and within a minute she came back with the small waterproof bag from the hidden compartment in the floor that held what Rufus had dubbed, tongue-in-cheek, the Memory Cache. Her own flash drive that had started it all. Lucy’s two tiny locket-sized pictures of Amy. Wyatt hadn’t yet put pictures of Jessica back in there. And Garcia...obviously he had something in there too--some pictures or mementoes of a wife.

Lucy handed Garcia the bag, and Denise watched as she hesitated, hand hovering near his arm for a moment, but then she backed away. Going to the computer, Garcia following in her shadow like a giant fretful tiger, she sat down and signed into the DHS database. “If we don’t get enough here, we should have you sign in over on the NSA.” Government agencies not fully playing ball with each other--hurray. But it helped them often enough to have an NSA agent on her team who had access to a different portfolio of information without her having to call in favors, especially since “Denise Christopher” wasn’t a favorite name with everyone over at the NSA after having taken down Jim Neville and a dozen others.

He sat down gingerly in the chair beside her, brow drawn into creases of confusion, hands fiddling the drawstring of the Memory Cache. “I still have NSA database access?” 

She looked over at him, more seeds of suspicion starting to sprout in her mind, but there wasn’t enough yet to create a clear picture. Suffice it to say, something had _definitely_ changed from those Rittenhouse jumps while they were there in 1733. “Why wouldn’t you? You were an asset for eight years, and then an active agent for the last two after I recruited you to the team.”

He shook his head almost unconsciously, muttering something lowly that sounded like a Croatian curse she heard him use. Whatever _yeh-boh-tay_ meant, but she could guess. His eyes flicked back to the screen, the blinking cursor waiting for the data input. He put the Memory Cache aside, laying it carefully on the Lifeboat console. Arms folding over his chest, he took in a deep breath, and suddenly his tone was all business, the brisk habit of a man who’d been in the covert ops business himself for years. “Right. Name: Lorena Claire Valaitis. Claire with an E, and V-A-L-A-I-T-I-S. DOB April 14, 1976, in Baltimore. Parents are Lawrence Donald and Nancy Ruth, nee Trappe.”

She rapidly typed in the information and ran the search. The two of them sat in silence, Garcia practically vibrating with tension next to her. One result popped up, and she clicked on it. “This is her? Y--” She almost said, _your wife_ , but stopped herself.

He looked at the photo of a woman with wavy, chin-length cinnamon-brown hair and dark eyes, a hint of a mischievous smile, and nodded. Sensing a man both transfixed and terrified, who wouldn’t--couldn’t--look away from the picture, couldn’t bear to look at the data himself, she scanned the essentials. “She’s alive.” Good news. “Lives in Baltimore. Works as a nurse practitioner. She’s married.” Bad news, because the man's name was definitely not _Garcia Mihajlo Flynn_. “To...a Timothy Lee Wrangell. Married on June 19, 1996.” 

She didn’t read the next part for him, sensing how deeply it would cut, but he leaned in and read it aloud himself, voice almost eerie in its flat calm. “Four kids. Samuel Andrew, February 6, 2008. Holly Christina, June 4, 2009. Jason Luke, November 20, 2011. And Marissa Rose, July 10, 2013.”

She shouldn’t ask, but she knew if Mark and Olivia had been wiped from the face of history as casually as erasing a chalkboard, she would need so much in that moment to say their names, to insist that they existed, they mattered, they were _real_ , Goddammit. And she’d seen how much he cared about children, how good he was with them, had always thought it was a bit of a shame he wasn’t a father himself. _Just never found the right person who was able to put up with me, sadly,_ he’d usually quipped. _Just never found a person I connected to deeply enough to love, and it’s not worth being lonely in a relationship,_ he’d confessed one night last winter over a beer. She’d spared his feelings and not mentioned Lucy, especially given Jessica had come back only a week before, and seeing both the giddy happy couple, and Lucy’s depression, obviously had to be a rough one-two punch. “Did you two have--”

“One. A daughter. Iris Maria.” He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “June 8, 2009.” He didn’t have to say it. She noticed the painful coincidence that Holly Christina Wrangell was only four days older. And though he’d put the bag aside, not opening it--maybe unable to open it now--she knew with a bone-deep certainty that some pictures of Lorena and Iris Flynn were in the Memory Cache. Maybe he’d wanted to look at them, or maybe he’d brought it as proof for Denise. She didn’t need it. She believed him.

“I don’t know how it happened, but they definitely didn’t go erase your existence, because I remember you--”

“No, them going to Baltimore in those years would have nothing to do with me. Lorena and I didn’t even meet until 2005, in Darfur. Before that, I'd only ever been in the US as a kid to visit Mom's family in Texas. Tim Wrangell was Lorena's childhood sweetheart. Killed in a car accident graduation week when he and a friend were drinking and drove.” He gave a humorless smile. “1993, in fact. I imagine Rittenhouse made sure he got home safe that night. How very responsible of them. The rest followed from there. Maybe they nudged them again in 1996 to get them married while they were still in college.”

She wanted to ask _Why?_ but sensed there were no answers there. Either he didn’t have them himself, or he wasn’t going to share. He stood up, swaying a little like a man who was at the very end of his limits, physically or psychologically or both, left hand gripping the chair back tightly. “Thank you for looking, Agent Christopher.” Something in her hurt to hear him address her so formally--they were closer than that. He’d called her _Denise_ along with the rest. “Do I still have an appointment down at Johns Hopkins tomorrow morning, or did that change while we were gone?”

Dragging him down to Baltimore where his never-wife lived seemed like twisting the knife, and then another thought popped into her head. She glanced at the screen, under the professional information for Lorena. “You do. And it looks like her primary assignment isn’t Johns Hopkins, but I’ll search a bit more and see if she works there at all.” 

“I think that it would be for the best that she doesn’t.” Somehow, he looked even paler and more done than when he’d climbed out of that Lifeboat. 

Deciding it was best to be honest, she told him, “They’re the best in region, and we need that, but if she does, I’ll make sure any further appointments are on a day she’s not there. And maybe I’d reschedule in general, given this news, but that injury was bad enough, and you obviously had a rough mission too soon. So I think you should keep the appointment if possible. We need you back in shape.”

He nodded, chewing his lower lip. “It’s for the best.” He said it half to himself. “Good night. I should get some sleep.” With that, he walked away, though she noticed he had his arms crossed over his chest as if to protect another wound. She saw the heavy bright blue poly of the Memory Cache still on the console where he’d left it, half opened. Picked it up and hesitated. She wouldn’t look. It felt too invasive of his privacy. Tugging the drawstrings closed again and redoing the airtight flap, she headed back towards the Lifeboat to replace it. 

“I’ve got that.” She heard Jiya’s voice behind her. She should have figured Jiya wouldn’t listen. “What’s up with Flynn?” She nodded towards the figure just now disappearing from the barn towards the house, carefully closing the door behind him. Jiya then took the Memory Cache from Denise’s hands. Handled it with all the precious care of a newborn, because her own pictures of Rufus were in there too.

“Didn’t I tell you to get some sleep?”

Jiya clambered up the stairs into the Lifeboat and crouched, carefully redoing the spring mechanism on the trapdoor in the floor. She looked up at Denise with an unflinching stare. “Denise, seriously, we’ve got 130 years of wear, decay, and erosion on this junk bucket while it was sitting there after I crashed. It was still shaking like a bad amusement park ride on the way to 1733, and it’s not gonna fix itself. That means we replace every single part, piece by piece, in between chasing Rittenhouse, and that’ll take months, because half of it we’ll need to build or machine ourselves. That’s before we can even get to doing the Lifeline capability upgrades, and those will take months once we get there. Plus I need to start training the others as pilots in case I’m ever injured or...out of commission.” Her eyes narrowed. “I know what I can handle. If that means I go hard for six months or so, then that’s what I do. I’ll sleep plenty once we have Rufus back.” 

She’d changed in 1888, and that was only to be expected. Nobody could have been left totally alone for 3 years in a rough area and emerged unchanged by that fire. But Denise couldn’t help but think there was something of obsidian about Jiya right in that moment, dangerous, shaped into a fierce edge sharp enough to cut, but so brittle.

“You can sleep while I take Garcia to his follow up in Baltimore tomorrow,” she allowed. “But promise me you _will_ sleep then, Jiya, and let Connor take over. You’re our pilot, and our friend. And Rufus will never forgive us if we don’t make sure you’re taken care of until we get him back, right?”

Jiya smiled a little, and her air softened at that, the angry tension leaving her shoulders. “So, Flynn?” she asked again. 

“His wife apparently married someone else ten years before they ever met.”

“That’s...yeah, OK, that’s a tough one. Well, at least she’s alive. Though maybe that makes it worse.”

“Alive? She wasn’t before?” 

“Hand me the 7/16” socket wrench,” she requested. “Yellow tape on the handle.” She scraped her hair back from her face, grabbing a ponytail holder from her wrist. “Rittenhouse really did a number on this one, huh?” She shook her head, grabbing the wrench and fitting it to a nut on the control panel. “You probably should talk to Lucy, ‘cause it’s not like Flynn and I have epic heart-to-hearts on the regular. But let me try for the Cliff’s Notes version. Flynn finds out Rittenhouse has been funding Mason Industries and the time machine in 2014, one of his NSA bosses lets Rittenhouse know, so they come to his house at night that fall, kill his wife and kid, and he barely gets out alive, Flynn goes total Rambo psycho determined to take out Rittenhouse to bring them back, he storms Mason Industries in October 2016 and steals the Mothership with Anthony’s help, goes to 1937 to blow up the Hindenburg for whatever insane reason he thought that was a great idea and would affect Rittenhouse, you assemble us all and get Lucy, Wyatt, and Rufus chasing him through time for close to a year, though we slowly figure out although he’s seemingly nuts and likes to go after history with a flamethrower he’s actually trying to go after Rittenhouse which is a much bigger threat, he finally agrees to cooperate with Lucy--because they’ve always have this _thing_ between them that none of us really can pin down--rather than blow up an entire building in 1954 full of Rittenbosses, we take down 90% of Rittenhouse and it’s not enough, we find out Emma Whitmore has been a backstabbing Rittenhouse bitch all along and steals the Mothership Flynn was surrendering, you get Flynn arrested as a terrorist and thrown in solitary, but then Rittenhouse dumps sleepers all over history, you break Flynn out about five months ago to help work with us and you pin it on the Iranians, right around then there’s a brief weird detour of Lucy and Wyatt being together for about a day before Rittenhouse brings Jessica back and she turns out to be a backstabbing Rittenhouse bitch too who kidnapped me, I escaped but the Lifeboat was damaged and I crashed it in 1885...and three years later for me, like the same day for you lot...the Chinatown mission...happened. That’s about where we’re at right now.” 

“I knew about Emma and Jessica being Rittenhouse. That...that happened. Chinatown happened.” It sounded like almost everything was the same, except that Garcia--it said a lot that they still called him _Flynn_ \--had a rather different role. Not the NSA covert operative with connections, copious field experience, and the like brought in as a linchpin of this time-hunter team. He’d instead been the enemy they’d been chasing, before they realized it was all Rittenhouse. Trying to reconcile that whole picture honestly gave her a headache. “So it was his wife and daughter’s murders that started this whole thing.”

Jiya gave a grunt, finally nudging a stubborn bolt loose, and ratcheting it out. “What happened here? In this version of things?”

“Rittenhouse slid under the radar. They stormed Mason Industries in 2016 because they had Connor over a barrel, they killed Anthony Bruhl and took Emma Whitmore as a quote unquote ‘hostage’ to be their pilot, and then they vanished with the Mothership. Connor immediately turned to us for help and admitted everything, because he was terrified of what they’d do. So I went out and I recruited Lucy and Wyatt. Garcia too. Because Rittenhouse had dug footholds into our entire intelligence network: FBI, CIA, NSA, DHS. He was an NSA asset recommended to me who I could trust as an intelligencer, and who’d also be a valuable field operative to work in tandem with Wyatt to protect Lucy and Rufus.”

Garcia was also finishing up a “removed from field ops” medical leave at that moment after recovering from wounds suffered on a mission in the Ukraine. She’d noted in his file that they were thinking of benching him a bit longer and keeping him at a desk for a year or two given he’d had some psychologically torturous years in Syria, the Ukraine, and Russia, and didn’t really have the family support system to help keep him grounded. His being benched at that moment had made it easy to get them to second him to her for her operation. 

Garcia being Garcia, and thus about as capable of subtlety as a Force 5 hurricane, he’d lasted about ten minutes into the briefing before dramatically insisting he was fit to go fight in the field, and given they had no idea of what they were getting into, and when or where Rittenhouse would appear, it was a waste of having an experienced fighter simply clicking computer keys and making phone calls. Wyatt glared at Garcia as if offended they thought he couldn’t do it alone, Garcia made his usual snarky remarks, and the two of course ended up on the wrong foot. Soon enough, the whole Lucy angle hadn’t helped that either, and the joke about Wyatt and Garcia was sometimes the team really couldn’t tell whether they wanted to kill or fuck each other. Connor had sighed, started working with Rufus and Jiya to fit a fourth seat in the Lifeboat, and that was that. 

“They knew Wyatt’s weakness. They brought Jessica back to get Wyatt to insist on bringing her here, so they could plant her as a mole.” She noticed Jiya couldn’t quite keep the bitterness from her tone. “But Flynn’s wife, she’s alive again, but she’s married to some other guy. What’s the angle here? Maybe they’re both Rittenhouse? Maybe she’s supposed to dump the current hubby, and snare Flynn?” She shook her head, reaching for a pair of wire snips, but her voice was full of that cutting, merciless obsidian edge again. “I don’t mean to be hard here, but Denise, seriously, do not let Flynn go after her. We all saw what happened the last time a guy was so happy his dead wife was alive, and so determined to fix his marriage, he forgot everything and everyone else. I swear...” Her voice lowered to barely more than a whisper. “I get it, you know. If Rufus suddenly appeared here...but I’d know I couldn’t trust him. I can’t. I won’t. Not unless it’s _us_ that takes out Emma and brings him back.”

Denise nodded. She didn’t say that Jiya had overlooked something important, but it was understandable. She knew all about the agonizing loss of a lover, but she wasn’t a parent, couldn’t comprehend the idea of losing a child. They’d brought back Flynn’s wife, but not his daughter. They’d apparently wiped his record clean too. There was something at work here she couldn’t quite put her finger on, but she knew it would bother her until she figured it out. She’d played chess with Garcia, reprimanded him, verbally sparred with him, made jokes with him. He’d met Michelle and her kids, eaten mustard chicken at her dinner table with her family, because she knew he and Lucy both had no close family ties left. But apparently this man was something, someone, quite different. Someone she’d thrown in prison as a terrorist, but then grudgingly broken out later. What was he to her now? Reluctant asset? Trusted ally? Verging on friend? “Jiya, he’s obviously different from the man I recruited. Can I trust this Ga--Flynn?” She wouldn’t ask Lucy, because Lucy was too close to the question. She needed a less biased opinion. 

Jiya breathed in deeply. “He’s still kind of a dick sometimes, but...I guess we didn’t really hang the welcome banner either. Not that he deserved it then. But every time we’ve needed him since you busted him out, he’s had our backs, and then some. He almost got killed himself on the Chinatown mission. So I think he’s earned our trust.”

 _So long as he doesn’t go rogue over this,_ Denise added silently to herself. She wouldn’t expect a frantic rush to go insert himself into Lorena Valaitis Wrangell’s life from the Garcia she knew, but maybe this man was capable of very different things? She’d have to keep an eye on him tomorrow on the trip to Baltimore. “Good night, Jiya. Please get some sleep.”

But at 3 AM, there she was herself at her bedroom window in the old farmhouse, looking out at the clouded blue-black sky, with only the faintest glow of moonlight peeking through the edge of one of the clouds. It was midnight in California right now. Michelle would probably be watching Golden Girls reruns, sleepless as ever. Wanting to call Denise, but also not wanting to be a bother. Proud, but terrified. Mark and Olivia with their questions, asking Mom wondering where Maan had gone, when she’d be back. So much she’d missed over the years, and she’d miss more now too. She couldn’t decide whether she’d need to bring them into the next safehouse so Rittenhouse couldn’t get to them, or whether that was pointless, because they could go kill Michelle in the past and there was only the breathless hope that her team, her chosen family, would be able to stop it. Would bringing them into the safehouse help protect them, or simply her indulging her own selfishness by bringing them into this insane firestorm that was her life? Wasn’t it better that they got to live their lives away from all this Rittenhouse darkness, even if they had to bear up the pain of her not being there?

She’d brought them all together, asked them to sacrifice so much for this impossible fight. Lucy, Wyatt--and yes, she still felt responsible for Garcia, because despite what Jiya said she couldn’t remember it otherwise--Rufus, Jiya. She’d drawn them into this madness, and here they were, two years later, all of them either breaking or broken. Wyatt, having gotten his wife back and fathered a child, hopes ripped away by discovering Jessica was Rittenhouse all along, and that she chose them. Lucy, who’d lost her sister, her mother, and come back from that Chinatown mission sometimes radiating cold, wintery waves of _don’t fuck with me_. Rufus, who never came back at all. Jiya, who’d lost three years of her life, lost the last of that giddy innocence, and came back a more-or-less widow forged tough as steel. Garcia, who’d apparently had his wife and daughter murdered in front of him, who’d seemingly lost himself fighting Rittenhouse, who’d now been given the agony of a living wife married to someone else, and a daughter still missing. Connor, who’d lost his company, felt the weight of his dead employees, the responsibility of having helped Rittenhouse get to where they were now. How had it been only a few months ago she’d laughingly called Jiya and Lucy Cagney and Lucy, thanking them for saving her future? Had it ever seemed like things were actually getting better? The cracks were there in all of them, and she wasn’t sure what she could do to help them bear up underneath the relentless burdens still ahead.

Closing her eyes for a moment, pressing her forehead to the window frame, she turned back and closed the curtains. Her eyes went to her phone for a moment. Michelle would be up. She’d want to talk, to listen. A part of her ached to dial that number and pour her heart out, and probably say far, far more than national security would allow. But she was so tired of the polite fictions, the half-truths, so maybe it was easier to say nothing at all.

Besides, her own work was waiting for her too. That meant finding their next quarters, preferably before winter. This place near Gettysburg was remote and quiet enough to hide for a while, but it wasn’t secure enough for the long term. She was hoping for somewhere in California to come through, but that was selfish too. Maybe that remote site up in Alaska was the best bet after all, and she’d best have at least one more temporary site all ready in case ASAP they ended up on the run in a hurry. She opened her laptop, ready to research more details. She couldn’t take back what the fight against Rittenhouse had stolen from them, what she’d asked them to give, and they’d handed over so freely, so trustingly. The best thing she could do for all of them right now was fight to protect them, and keep them safe.


	2. 3x01: First Amendment, Second Chance (Garcia: Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, June 2018)

Everything had changed around him, and he’d known nothing, felt nothing, sitting there in that dank New York jail. The way seismic things could happen and the ripples wouldn’t show up until they returned to the present might never fail to shock him. Garcia stared at the laptop screen on the desk, glowing brightly in the dark, disbelieving it. His NSA sign-in still worked, as Christopher had said it would. He’d pulled his own file and there it was: founder of Illyrian Securities in 2008, with Stjepan “Stiv” Casey as his lieutenant. His partner, really, but Stiv had razzed him and said, “Nah, you’re officially the owner, because we both know I can’t deal with the bureaucratic headaches.” Stiv, his friend, his brother, who’d died in a blaze of agony in the _Hindenburg_. Though maybe that had changed too. He couldn’t check, because wrapping his head around all of this was too much to begin. 

Turned from asset to sworn NSA agent in 2016, now listed as seconded over to DHS. DOB January 31st, 1975, in Split, Croatia. Next of kin, half-brother, Gabriel Peter Thompkins, fifty-five, architect, Paris. The usual mundanities, an email box with messages from other NSA agents, citing his expertise with this or that, asking for information. This was a community he’d never been a part of, because at best, the NSA had sought Illyrian out, asked to join forces, and both he and Stiv had eagerly jumped at that. But Jim Neville was his NSA handler and that was that. He’d always been on the edge of the NSA web, never an integral part of it, and looking at that computer screen and the increased access, the way multiple people tapped him as a resource, said enough.

He answered a few of the messages because honestly, it was a welcome respite to bury himself in small tasks like sending his read on the probable politics of a rising Ukrainian insurgency group. It meant pushing away the surrealness for a few moments. Also because the guilt of that damn email inbox would sit with him otherwise. He’d always prided himself on being punctual.

Then he bit the bullet. The easiest one first. The search for Timothy Lee Wrangell pulled up a picture of a balding, pleasant-featured middle-aged man that a tall eighteen-year-old running back had never become. Lorena’s first love was a polymer chemist, went to U Maryland as he’d planned, graduated with a MS, got married during undergrad. Nothing really noted in the NSA database, so his biggest secrets were probably Internet porn sites and a couple of speeding tickets. _Is he Rittenhouse?_ Right, because the first assumption was that he was Rittenhouse so Garcia could...what? Go kill the man without guilt? Yeah, that would solve everything. 

He forced himself to tackle the hardest one next. There was no Iris Maria Flynn, or any Iris Maria born on June 4th of 2009, as he’d known there wouldn’t be. _What did you think, idiot? That she’d exist still? Lorena has a daughter four days older, so--what? You’re hoping this Holly Wrangell is actually Iris? That you, what, met a nurse in a bar one night, presumably on the rocks with her husband, you two felt some peculiar spark, got drunk together, went to a hotel and had sex, and she got pregnant? Or you had a one-off with some other woman and Iris is the result? Really, does that sound at all possible, Garcia ‘I’ve had two lovers in my life because I’m not attracted to you until I love you’ Flynn?_ He let out a gruff bark of laughter, hearing the waver in it that told him he was raggedly hanging onto the edge of sanity by his fingernails. _Well, scratch that. Guess I’ve only had one._ Never mind that he could remember every detail of nine years of knowing Lorena, eight years of making love with her, seven years married to her, five years of raising a child with her. It had all been real, the memories still vivid despite the distance of four years, except now he was supposed to accept that not a single bit of it had happened. That Iris had never existed. His child hadn’t been _meant_ to exist.

 _It’s war_ , he’d snapped at Lucy in that train station in 1865. Trying too hard to justify it to her, and justify it to himself, because really, hearing about her sister hit him with the force of a ton of bricks. There had been a sister in the journal, and Lucy’s love for her shone clearly. But she’d never said how Amy died. He’d assumed she’d been murdered by Rittenhouse too, and Lucy simply didn’t know it yet. But that would be something making them even more kindred.

Instead, there she was, the woman who’d promised him a partnership, the woman who’d been staring at him with fear and hatred in the flames of the _Hindenburg_. The woman now accusing him of effectively killing her sister, but even as he’d wanted to apologize, he couldn’t crumble. He still had so far to go, to get close to eradicating Rittenhouse, and he couldn’t fail then by falling apart. Even if for a moment he’d wanted to as the panic of _What the hell have I done?_ sank in. 

But God, among his struggle for the cold facade, he’d noticed she’d found courage. Twelve hours or so since they met, since he’d grabbed her and held her hostage against Wyatt’s threat to shoot. She’d had a hell of a night and then gone home to find her sister gone, and she’d recovered to put such steel in her spine already to not flinch at seeing him again. She’d already started to move beyond the terrified bumbling historian. She’d been magnificent, and for a moment, he’d wanted nothing more than to kneel and beg her for her forgiveness, to promise he’d try to bring her sister back, of course he would, but he couldn’t do this alone, he needed her to help him figure out how the hell he was supposed to fight this war. Lucy Preston was the key to everything, but she’d been working for Rittenhouse, even unknowingly, and there was little sign of the woman he’d seen in 2014. He’d wanted to trust her, but he couldn’t.

He’d struggled to believe in the necessity of total war, despite what William Tecumseh Sherman may have claimed, and in the end, he’d failed. Of course Emma held no such scruples.

Ruthlessly locking that memory away, because Lucy was whole different tangled skein of emotion in her own right, he typed in Lorena’s vitals. Hesitated, fingers hovering over the keys. Couldn’t press “search” for a few moments, then forced himself to it. Time travel gave some new perspective on things. Miracle and bane at once, modern technology. Sitting in an 1730’s waistcoat, breeches, shirt, and stockings at a chipped and battered 1920’s desk in an faded 1830’s farmhouse, and looking at a device that could tell him in a matter of moments precisely how fucked this whole situation was. Compared to the ambiguity and delay of finding information in the past, he would know, swiftly and surely, and he couldn’t say whether that was a blessing or torment or both.

He skimmed the results, trying to avoid looking at her picture. No employment at Johns Hopkins, for which he was thankful. She was a nurse practitioner and co-founder of the Foundation of St. Francis.

Switching over to Google, he pulled up their webpage. A nonprofit clinic providing free medical care for underprivileged, named for Saint Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of the poor. She was also listed there as one of the founding members of the clinic. Of course she was. A different Lorena Valaitis, one who hadn’t been so settled in Baltimore already by a young marriage, had joined the Red Cross a few years after getting her RN, rather than going for the advanced nurse practitioner. She wanted to go help and heal people in poor, war-torn areas. 

_They finally looked after all the kids and the one nurse insisted on checking him out, pointing him to a cot in the hospital tent. He really was trying for conversation, because he probably smelled like a warthog’s ass after a week on horseback in the desert heat, and without the adrenaline anymore, safe back at the Red Cross camp, the leg had started to throb a bit. The air was stifling and the light muted beneath the heavy canvas. ”Red Cross nurse in a war zone--a modern Clara Barton, huh?” He couldn’t imagine otherwise. The Civil War nurse who’d founded the Red Cross, a formidable woman, a fighter and a healer in a time when a woman wasn’t supposed to be anything but a sweet, compliant wife and mother._

_“Funny thing. My middle name’s Claire. Clara Barton’s always been a heroine to me, yes, but Mom and Dad named me for Clare of Assisi. Francis’ acolyte. I prayed about it before I applied for the job, but I already knew.” She reflexively touched the gold cross around her neck. “Clara and Clare both--it was a calling.”_

_He wasn’t a strong believer like that, but he’d been raised enough in the faith to respect it in others. Then she looked at him, all business, pointing at the blood-crusted left knee of his fatigues. “Well, you’re not dead from blood loss or gangrene, but I’m sure that knife was incredibly dirty and you haven’t been able to care for it properly.”_

_“I stitched it up and tried to keep it clean?” he answered hesitantly._

_“Jesus, you soldier boys,” she muttered, shaking her head. “All right, get your pants off and let’s see what you’ve got.” Her mouth twitched up into a smile, dark eyes dancing with mischief. “Which is not something I generally say to men two minutes after meeting them, even when they’re tall, dark, and handsome.” He thanked an infinitely merciful God in that moment for the Sudanese sun giving him deeply suntanned cheeks that hid his blush._

By the time he and Lorena got back to the camp three weeks later after escorting the kids home and providing medical care to the village, they were talking every night at the campfire. Two months later, when she kissed him in the Mogadishu market, he was hopelessly gone.

All of that was a lie now, but it was there in his head all the same. He felt the lump in his throat, thick and choking, because it was like losing them all over again. He couldn’t even bear to touch his memories of Iris. He’d left the Memory Cache alone because he couldn’t look at their pictures in that moment.

Shutting the lid of the laptop, he glanced over at his bed. No, he wouldn’t sleep tonight, Agent Christopher’s orders or no, but he didn’t want to provoke her either. Changing out of his 18th century clothes, he waited, watching from the window until he saw Christopher’s small figure move through the shadowed moonlight on the well-worn dirt path between the barn and the farmhouse. Waited until he heard the low creaks of the two stairs that always made noise, because as Lucy put it, a hundred and eighty year old farmhouse had its “quirks”. Once he was certain she was in her room, he slipped out the door of his own room, cautiously heading down the stairs, stepping over the two creakers: three and seven from the top.

He’d meant to go work on the Lifeboat, because while he didn’t have Mason and Jiya’s knowledge, he could certainly help try to clean some of the rust and wear off. But as he pushed the door open, he saw Jiya’s ponytailed head bowed over the workbench, slim hands busy. He debated turning around and finding a book instead, but decided to hell with it. They’d come to--he wasn’t sure what he’d call it. A truce? An understanding? Something, anyway, a week or so ago. He wouldn’t go so far as to say she forgave him for what he’d tried to do to Rufus by siccing Capone on him, but it seemed like she’d made her peace and wouldn’t hurry to see him dead. That was something.

_Jiya’s hand on his shoulder, giving him a strange sort of benediction. “I’m guessing from how much you’ve fought Rittenhouse that it’s not that you still want to die, but if so, find some other way. Give it everything you’ve got because we’ll need you, but don’t get killed on Rufus’ account. He wouldn’t want it. And I don’t want it.”_

He moved closer to the workbench, deliberately walking more heavily than needed so she wouldn’t think he’d crept up on her. “Need a hand?” 

She glanced over her shoulder, looking back at him. “What, you have two to spare?”

He shrugged, ignoring how the pull of it made his right shoulder ache. He’d taken his damn ibuprofen and that would help. “One and a half, anyway.” 

“Good. Help me get the pilot’s control panel off. We’re gonna do some rewiring.” She pointed towards the panel in the Lifeboat.

Following her up the metal staircase, he hung the work light from the back of the chair, directing the beam of light into the dark underside of the control panel. Tight quarters trying to work around the four seats in the Lifeboat, and Jiya, as a small woman, had it easier than him. She could actually fit underneath easily, whereas he ended up awkwardly bent like a pretzel around one of the passenger seats. It took her only a minute to speak up, her voice slightly muffled by having wedged herself beneath the control panel. “Guess that was our first actual mission together.”

“So it would seem.” Maybe it helped she didn’t have the animosity of seeing Anarchist Asshole Garcia Flynn in the wild like Wyatt and Rufus had. She hadn’t been stuck for almost a year racing through time trying to stop his seemingly-lunatic plans. Aside from Capone, he was only some weirdo terrorist her boyfriend had been annoyed with hunting down. Nothing personal.

She was harder than Rufus, which he had to imagine was the effect of the 1880’s, because the Jiya he’d briefly come to know before that in the bunker was softer, less certain, less confident. “You’re an excellent pilot.” He wasn’t going to bring up that he’d been piloted by Anthony, Emma, Rufus, and now her, so he certainly had the best perspective of anyone on this team, but she had an instinct for it.

“OK, powering down, let’s get going on these wires,” and she flipped the power switch off. The lights flickered and then died in the Lifeboat, the work light providing only a small spot of illumination in the sudden gloom. “I’m only half trained,” she demurred. “But I’m what we’ve got.”

“Yeah, sounds like Rufus thought he was only half trained too when this all started.” He smiled wryly, undoing one of the connection leads, neatly twisting the wires together so they wouldn’t catch and snarl as they pulled the panel out. “And he still managed to keep up with me having the dual advantages of Anthony _and_ the Mothership, so…guess that makes Rufus incredibly phenomenal, me incredibly ineffective, or...” He held his hands out, palms up, raising and lowering them like the platforms of a scale. “We’ll say some of both?” 

Jiya laughed at that. OK, so self-deprecation worked. That was good. They spent another five or so minutes working in companionable silence, until they’d levered the control panel out and had it in place on the workbench.

“Crap,” Jiya muttered, flicking a fingertip against the badly corroded wires. “How did this survive the jump to 1733 and back? If nothing else, we’d better get all the wiring redone before we jump again.” 

“It looks like something actually chewed this one,” he replied, pointing at the holes in yellowed wiring insulation that had once been white. Mason and Rufus must have missed it in their rush to get the thing up and working. The wire was intact, but they were lucky this one hadn’t been a problem.

She looked up at him and she grinned. “Dunno, maybe there’s some confused squirrel out there that suddenly got zapped to, like, Machu Picchu in 1910?” It was a bad joke, not nearly funny enough to warrant the helpless laughter that followed it. 

But stupid bad jokes were exactly what both of them apparently needed right then, and when he followed it up with, “It’s probably sitting there pissed off and wondering where its acorn cache went,” that set them off again. 

Jiya’s smile finally disappeared, and she looked away, her shoulders tensing as she crossed her arms over her chest. “Must be nice to be a squirrel. Have such little problems. Sounds like your life sucks too.”

“Ah. Agent Christopher filled you in?”

“Well, considering you lit out of here like Dracula fleeing the sunlight--” She raised her hands. “No offense, Flynn. Don’t blame you. She told me about--what she knew. And was trying to figure out what changed.”

“And what happened?” It was easier to ask her than Christopher, treating him like she did, in ways he didn’t deserve. 

“Apparently in this reality nobody caught on to Rittenhouse, and they stole the Mothership in 2016. Killed Anthony, ‘kidnapped’,” she gave the word dramatic air quotes, “Emma. Connor freaked out, figured he’d made a huge mistake, and immediately got the Feds involved. Denise recruited Wyatt, Lucy...and you. Sounds as though the rest has all been pretty much the same, but...you were with us, on the team, right from the start.”

“Me?”

Jiya shrugged. “I mean, I’ll admit, from what I’ve seen you’re definitely good in the field. And she said as an NSA guy, you had a lot of useful info and contacts too.”

The spectre of that Garcia Flynn haunted him. God, to be that man--to have been here all along, to belong, to be trusted, to not know the depths of darkness he would sink to and the unforgivable mistakes he’d make in order to bring Rittenhouse down. What the fuck had Emma done, and more importantly, why? “Thank you for telling me.” 

She nodded in return. “Thought you should know.”

They spent the next few hours working, him following her direction. Engineer’s child that he was, he could follow a schematic and make intuitive leaps readily enough, but this was her baby, and too much depended on getting it right. She flipped on the radio, and the sound of ‘90’s grunge was a welcome distraction. At least the silence between them didn’t feel tense, and at the back of his mind he could almost imagine this bizarre reality where something like this had been normal. Where maybe he and Jiya had been friends. He finally quit just after dawn to go shower, and came downstairs to find Agent Christopher waiting for him. _Time to take the dog to the vet._

The drive to Baltimore started in silence, and as opposed to Jiya, this was the awkwardness of two people genuinely not knowing what to say. He shoved the seat all the way back--must have been Jiya or Lucy riding in the passenger seat last. Barely five minutes later, she pulled into the drive through of a Dunkin Donuts on the outskirts of town. Didn’t even ask what he wanted, which he didn’t really expect, but he also didn’t expect her to rattle off, “Large coffee, two sugars and one cream, a glazed and a Boston creme,” and then move into her own order, as if she’d done this with him a hundred times before. 

She obviously had, because as she handed the coffee cup and the donut bag over, she looked at him, shook her head, and said with fond irritability, “You and your sweet tooth. I hate your metabolism, Garcia.”

All he could do was smile awkwardly in return, which probably looked like, _I have no idea what the fuck is going on but I’ll humor your lunacy_. Though to her, he was the one who’d changed overnight. 

She drove away from the Dunkin a little aggressively, tires squealing. The silence fell again. They hit the Interstate before she spoke up again. “Jiya told me. How it went in...your reality.”

OK, so she was fully aware he was, or had been, an escaped prisoner who was there on her sufferance and on pretty much every government watch list as a terrorist. “Well, that does put a damper on our relationship.”

She took her glance off the road long enough to issue an impressive glower. “Really, Garcia? I’m trying to be serious and you’re throwing ‘Princess Bride’ quotes?”

Something cracked inside him, and he put the coffee down in the cupholder, not caring it sloshed a little onto the plastic. “I’ve had a hell of a rough 48 hours getting into a brawl, thrown in a _literally lousy_ 18th century jail, then coming back to find out Emma took a fucking merry joyride so she could make my life an even worse cesspool that it already is, so precisely what do you want from me, _Denise_?”

“I always wonder, is it physically impossible for you to go 24 hours without being snarky and overly dramatic?”

“Yeah, well, you’re the one who broke me out of jail,” he fired back. “Or recruited me. Whatever. Take your pick, and let’s see if it changes again tomorrow.”

He looked away, staring out the window. He couldn’t make it add up. He knew his place in this whole order of things. Terrorist, killer, necessary evil. Lucy was the only one who genuinely gave a damn, and looked at him like he was worth something. He was the fighting dog they’d let off the chain, and maybe they’d trust to not shit on the carpet at this point, so to speak, but he didn’t _belong_. But from what Jiya said, and from how Christopher treated him, there was this whole reality where they’d been colleagues in federal service, and obviously bickered and cared. They’d been friends. He’d been a part of all of this. Could he have been that man even in the reality he knew, could there have been some way? No, how the hell could he have been when he’d been burned by Jim Neville, marked on every government watch list, and left fleeing for his life? No federal agency would have touched him then. 

He only realized he’d dozed off when he woke as she parked the car. “You looked like you needed the sleep,” she said, and her tone was strangely gentle. “I doubt you got any last night.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. Gulping down the lukewarm coffee and the glazed donut, he nodded towards the front door of the clinic, telling her that he’d be fine from here. “Thank you.”

For the surgery a month ago, and then the first post-operative appointment two weeks ago, he had been registered as “Michael Thompkins”. To be able to check in as Garcia Flynn, to openly use his name for the first time in nearly four years and not know it would end with a damn SWAT team there to capture him, almost made him dizzy. This was all a dream, wasn’t it?

Sitting on the exam table, it was Abby Kovac, the same doctor as last time, who had him pull his shirt off. The exam room was the same: neutral paint, orthopedic charts helpfully illustrating all the fun injuries that could be done to various joints. One for the back and spine, one for the knee, one for the ankle, one for the hand and arm. Kovac did what he expected, pretty much the same as she’d done when he was Michael Thompkins: checked his range of motion and strength, made encouraging motions, asked him about his pain levels. She frowned, looking at his right flank, at the still-purple scar there. “I didn’t really notice that one last time.”

 _Yeah, I guess in this reality, I wasn’t in prison to get shanked._ “No reason you should have. I didn’t call your attention to it because it’s not related to this. That was months ago, and it wouldn’t have been in your records. I had to get it treated...ah...elsewhere.” He waved his hand in way that meant _better that you don’t ask_.

Her hand brushed over the scar on his neck from Wyatt’s bullet at the _Hindenburg_. He’d guess that one hadn’t been there either. “You heal up well, but apparently you live an interesting life, Agent Flynn,” she remarked dryly. He smiled to himself. _You have no idea._ “It’s doing very well for one month in, but you’ve got some acute swelling and inflammation today.” She gave him a sharp look. “Overdid it at the gym trying to get yourself back to field-ready, huh?”

He gave her a sheepish smile, reaching for his undershirt. “Guilty as charged. I don’t do well with inaction.”

She shook her head, giving a marvelously impressive roll of her eyes. “You Feds never do. Any numbness or tingling at all when you push it too hard?”

“A little.” By the end of the 1733 mission, his fingers had felt clumsy. Still better than in 1888 when the entire arm felt more or less dead, and his shoulder and chest were a wildfire of pain. 

The look turned to _That’s because you’re pushing it too hard, asshole._ Lorena had that look perfected when she’d been left dealing with him coming home after an injury on a mission. “You’re lucky, you know. It was a small-caliber handgun, and you said the shooter was some distance away. If it hadn’t hit your ribs, and if they hadn’t taken the brunt of the force, you’d have collapsed a lung for sure and died on the spot.”

“I’m aware I’m lucky. A fellow agent of mine...” because Rufus hadn’t been a friend...had he? “He wasn’t so fortunate. She left him dead on the floor,” he answered her flatly. “Shot in the neck.” _I severed his carotid artery._ “Bled out. Nothing we could do.” 

Kovac’s eyes softened at that. “Counseling is available, you know.”

“I know. Thanks. We’ve got a good counselor with the department. I’ll make an appointment.” He lied, because it was what she needed to hear. He couldn’t talk to a shrink. He wasn’t averse to the concept--Lorena forcing him to talk to someone after the Damascus bombing had done him some good. But how the hell could he try to explain the last four years of his life to a psychiatrist without sounding like paranoid delusional whackjob?

“The cracked ribs are still knitting, and the muscles and nerves are still going to take time. Keep up the desk duty for another four to six weeks, and then slowly reintroduce to field duty. Keep up the ice and the ibuprofen for the inflammation. Continue your PT exercises, and don’t go too fast. Slow and steady.”

He nodded to acknowledge it, knowing he’d ignore her. Wasn’t like he had a backup to take his place on the Lifeboat, and Emma wouldn’t be the sort to back off when she’d scented blood. He hoped Jiya got that wiring done soon, because he had the feeling they wouldn’t be waiting long for the next mission. He pulled on the faded dark red t-shirt next, thankful it wasn’t fiddly 18th century buttons. 

“Did you catch her?”

“Not yet.” And apparently he’d have even more reason to kill Emma, once he figured out exactly why she’d done this latest little flip of history. Like he’d needed even more cause to want her dead. He shouldn’t have let her get away in 1919, but he’d been helpless to do otherwise. “But I’m not giving up until we do.”

Heading back to the car, he saw Christopher heading there also, a white paper pharmacy bag in her hands. “You all right?” he asked, nodding towards it.

“Routine meds,” she muttered, shoving the bag in her purse. “What did the doctor say?”

“Recovering.” She shot him a look. “Not 100% yet.”

“Do I have to go ask for her report, or can you be honest with me like a grown up?”

“She wants me on desk duty for another month to be safe.” He returned her stare, measure for measure. “We both know that can’t happen. I’m not fully healed. But I’ll get by, and I’m better than sending Wyatt in alone.” 

She looked away, sighed, and nodded. “All right. But I want to see you at the range and observe and clear you. If your aim isn’t steady, you’re as much a liability as an asset.” She leaned in and lowered her voice. “Especially since it may be heavy flintlocks with poor accuracy?”

That was a fair point. They’d managed to skip the firearms in the tavern brawl. “Fine. That makes sense.”

She acknowledged that with a vague hand wave, then folded her arms across her chest and leaned back against the car, head bowed slightly. “It’s early yet.”

He’d gotten the first available appointment at 8, and it was barely 8:20 now. “So we’ll be back to Gettysburg by 10. Marvelous. Didn’t ever have you pegged as the brunch type.”

She sighed again, shaking her head in that _What the hell am I going to do with you?_ gesture. “We’re already here. And it’s a damn Pandora’s box. I figure either I take you there, or you’re probably just going to steal the car and go yourself and make who knows how much of a mess.”

“Wait, what?”

“I have the Wrangells’ address.” He hoped his jaw didn’t drop in shock. He hadn’t looked, because he honestly hadn’t wanted the temptation. “If we go, we can probably catch her and at least some of the kids. I want you to swear all you’re going to do is observe. No leaping out of the car to go babble at this poor woman all about how you’re her time traveling husband and you need to fix things.” She arched an eyebrow. “You do that, I promise you I’m shutting down the situation right then,” she snapped her fingers, “by marching in, flashing my badge, and arresting you claiming you’re a violent paranoid schizophrenic responsible for any number of terrorist acts.”

He felt like he couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, but as usual, his smartassdom apparently was rooted safely somewhere in his unconscious. “Isn’t that what you thought I was until I showed you all that you were actually _working for Rittenhouse_ for months?”

“I don’t know,” she fired back. “Damn it, Garcia, I hear what Jiya told me, and you’re telling me too, but...I can’t _see_ it. I can see how it could have happened that way, but I can’t make you into that man. I know you. I know the man I’ve been working alongside for the past two years. I know my friend. You’ve met my kids. You’ve eaten dinner with my wife.”

“I don’t...do you know what I’d give to _be_ that man?” He heard the ragged edge in his own voice. “To have not dived right into a river of shit I’ll never get clean from, no matter how many missions I do with you? I’m your asset. You put up with me because I’m useful. But I haven’t...this, you, me,” he gestured to the two of them. “I haven’t earned that.”

A clean slate, the right to use his name and to walk the streets a free man someday when all of this was over. A Denise Christopher who had never looked at him, across the table at an interrogation, or shackled like an animal to that prison hospital bed, like he was a particularly vile cockroach. Absolution, handed to him in a shiny gift-wrapped Christmas package, there for the taking. It killed him, guilt a sharp dagger slicing right into the heart of him, because he would always know he had cheated. He hadn’t won his own redemption by taking down Rittenhouse, hadn’t helped balance the scales enough. And every time someone looked at him like he was a good man, so ignorant of all his sins, he’d feel the wound of it all over again, the panic and anxiety of wondering how they’d feel if only they knew what darkness really lurked inside of him.

Had Emma hoped for that outcome too, knowing it for a poisoned apple he couldn’t bear? Knowing her, probably. She was meticulous enough to have planned this whole thing out, charted the likely outcomes.

“I won’t talk to her,” he said wearily, turning away and leaning on the car beside her, suddenly feeling unable to stand upright. “I don’t...all I ever wanted was to see them alive again. But I could never go home to them again. Not after everything I’d done. I would have walked away. _I would have walked away._ ” 

Even that idea of hugging them again one last time was a delusional fantasy he’d cherished until it dawned on him how utterly impossible it was after he said it aloud to Lucy. How could he do that? Hug them and then walk out the front door? It wasn’t that he couldn’t bear to leave. It was that one last selfish embrace would leave them wondering why he’d shown up and then left, leaving only abandonment and questions. “I would have asked you to produce some death for me on paper,” he said, barely able to muster the energy for more than a whisper, because there was nothing left in him right now, hollow and empty. “Something to give them closure. They deserved that, so they could move on.” And with Rittenhouse done, he would have accepted prison then. He wasn’t Wyatt with his delusions of the armor of righteousness. He knew full well that he deserved nothing less than to be locked away and rot for the things he’d done. He just couldn’t accept that fate until the job was done.

“I believe you,” she said, voice low and soothing, and that threatened to split him open, start him bawling like a child. “What do you want to do?”

She thought she was his friend, in spite of everything, and it was a cheat and a lie, but in that moment, he didn’t have the pride to do anything but be grateful for it. Obviously he'd already run towards it that he was running his mouth at her so openly, saying all these things like he could have if she was his friend. He managed one shaky breath, and then another, trying to center himself. One foot in front of the other, keep going, because that was all that he could do. “Yes, all right. Just let me see her.”

“We’ll look into them. See if they’re Rittenhouse,” she promised him grimly.

He shook his head, heading for the other side of the car. “Doesn’t matter. If they are, then what do I do? Fine, maybe we get them out of Rittenhouse, but...it’s done. Emma’s got me tied down any way this goes. I know how this has to go. I’ll never see my little girl again, and I’m going to have to live with that."

“Garcia…”

He pushed on, striving for that same impenetrable steely armor he’d needed to tell Lucy _It’s war._ “Denise,” he used her name deliberately. “What do I do? Go back and kill Tim Wrangell? Deliberately kill a teenage boy, erase four kids from existence, condemn Lorena and Iris to die brutally by Rittenhouse assassins, just so I can _hope_ to bring Iris back? Five lives permanently destroyed, and two in the balance.” He sucked in a shuddering breath, closing his eyes. “Can’t do it. Can’t. It’s simple math.” And he was so tired of the man who'd run around not caring about snuffing out innocent lives and trying to justify it, both to himself and others.

She started the engine. “It’s your daughter. One life, but when that one life means everything...”

“ _You think I don’t know that?_ ” It said something about both her guts, and the trust she had in him, that a raging six foot four man in her passenger seat didn’t faze Denise Christopher. “You think it’s not going to kill me to be forced to give up on my own child? You’re a mother, you fucking well tell me how to handle this and bring Iris back without sacrificing innocent people!” She was the only one who probably would understand, the only other one who knew parenthood. What it had felt like to hold a newborn Iris, the irrevocable surrender of a piece of his heart, torn from his chest and now resting within that tiny being in his hands, how vulnerable and terrified it made him. Being willing to kill or die for her, do anything but hurt her or fail her. 

Hands clutching the steering wheel, her voice sounded small and lost as she said, “I don’t know. If it was Michelle...so long as she was happy, I could let go. But...Olivia...”

“There’s no other way. There’s not, and you know it. Emma’s making me play God.” He managed a shaking laugh, knowing he was on the edge of coming apart. _You think I can handle this, God? Really?_ “My baby. Should have named her Iphigenia.” Lorena alive, four children, a good life. Five lives for one, but why did Iris Flynn have any less right to exist than Holly Wrangell? But then, did Holly Wrangell have any less right than Iris? He knew what he had to do, and he wasn’t sure he could bear it. “I was supposed to protect her, you know?” He’d failed her in this same city four years ago when the monsters came in the dark. But he felt like he’d never failed Iris more as a father than right now, when he knew he’d have to walk away and let go, and tell his little girl that her father was no hero, that he wouldn’t--couldn’t--fight this fight for her anymore, that it would hurt too many people.

“Do you want to see Lorena?”

He needed to see her and her husband and children, because that would make him stick to his resolve. He needed to see her alive and well and happy, and know that the darkness of his life hadn’t touched her. “Yes.”

She shifted into reverse. “I’m buying you a beer after that. Don’t argue with me.”


	3. 3x01: First Amendment, Second Chance (Garcia: Baltimore, Maryland, June 2018)

The moment Denise--had to start trying to think of her as Denise after this--hit the exit, Garcia knew exactly where they must be going. He’d known the address too, if only he’d thought about it. He hadn’t wanted to think about it, told himself that a polymer chemist with four kids probably bought something bigger and more impressive, in a more upscale suburb.

But then, it had never been money with her. He’d made decent money himself, and Lorena working constantly on contract depending whether they were in Split and Baltimore, because skilled RNs always held some negotiating power, certainly helped. They’d never been what he’d call wealthy, but they’d never had to worry about paying the bills. It was always _time_ that was in short supply, especially when he was out on a contract. If he could have back those five short years of Iris Maria Flynn’s life, God, he’d have gotten the NSA to agree to move him to Baltimore right away, rode a desk and been intel-only rather than out in the field, pursued that MA all the more aggressively. Been home every night. Given Lorena more children, which she’d always wanted. They’d been trying for a few months back in 2014, after he’d finally dealt with the Damascus bombing enough to not have the thought of another child, a child who could be killed so easily by unthinking and unfeeling and uncaring people with one careless command, give him such utter bleak terror. He should have known better than to hope. Only three months later his own child was slaughtered by monsters. He’d never found out if that second child was another future that died that night. Probably not, given they’d tried for almost a year for Iris, and six years later, they were both nearly forty. He hadn’t wanted to know, and now he never would. No autopsy report existed now for Lorena Claire Valaitis Flynn.

Lorena had loved--did love--the house she’d inherited. All the happy memories of her grandparents there. They’d kept the house because it was convenient to have when they came to America to visit with her family, and then when they’d carefully planned his exit strategy from the covert ops game, it was perfect. He’d come to love the house too, the old Victorian. That was the part of him that was his father’s child, raised in old Europe with the sense of the deep solemn weight of history, of the comforting permanence of some things even as others were always in flux, as the wire that strung it all together. He would have hated the sterile suburbs with their soulless houses and neatly manicured lawns as much as Lorena did. 

Of course Lorena and Tim Wrangell would have made their home there. “I should have figured,” he said, as Denise pulled over.

“Did you--”

He nodded, looking across at the house. The Wrangells had repainted it, a creamy pale yellow, rather than light blue. “We lived here, yes. When we were in America.” 

Three years and eight months since he’d run from this very house, a bullet graze on his left arm, two broken fingers, and a badly cut left foot from stepping on broken glass when he’d fought and killed their lookout in the living room. Nothing but a ratty old t-shirt and faded pajama pants and a Glock in his hand. A dead body cooling on the living room carpet. One more up in Iris' room along with his wife and daughter.

But that had never happened now. No dead body in the living room. None in Iris’ room, because that pink-painted room had never existed. This was a perfectly ordinary house where two people lived, raised a family. Probably grilled on weekends.

Staring at the house as he was, he startled at the knock on the backseat window. Glancing back, his heart almost leaped from his chest. There she was. Hair a bit longer than he remembered, pulled back into some kind of fancy twist. A few more lines on her face given she’d never made it to forty. Smiling in a way that only someone who’d known her would notice the slight narrowing of her eyes and recognize as her _I’m suspicious and about ten seconds from calling the cops_ expression. 

He heard Denise mutter what he expected was about the equivalent of _jebote_ in Hindi. 

Nothing to be done but brazen their way through it, and he coolly pushed the control to roll down the window, even as he felt like he could hardly hold still, hands trembling, could hardly keep down the coffee and the donut. “Good morning, Ms.--”

“Wrangell.” She looked at the two of them, expression still uncertain. “I don’t mean to be rude, but you’ve been parked across the street staring at this house for at least five minutes.” 

No recognition, not a single spark when she looked at him. He wasn’t sure whether he’d hoped for that small indicator of confusion or hesitation that somewhere deep inside, a part of her soul would always know him, even if not recognize him. It wasn’t there. Only the uneasy assessment of wondering whether this tall, dark, strange man was some kind of predator here for her kids, and the lioness-fierce intensity she gave off at the idea. He could have laughed at that idea and completely fallen apart. _No, Lorena, sweetheart, six of them came here for your child. You fought. I know you fought. And I could do nothing. Still can’t._

He glanced behind Lorena, saw the kids on the driveway by the car. The two boys, but it was the girls...he couldn’t look for too long. Seeing Marissa was like seeing Iris again, and seeing Holly was seeing what Iris Flynn might have been in 2018. He couldn’t or he’d fall apart in front of Lorena and then she really would call the cops, and Denise probably would pull him off the Lifeboat until he passed some kind of psych eval. Good luck trying to explain everything to a shrink. Besides, he really would go crazy if he didn’t at least have the fight. 

Not to mention if he kept staring at her kids she really might attack him. He forced himself to try to find his center again, calm down. Get through the next five minutes and not escalate the situation. “Everything all right here?” Tim Wrangell, that same careful scrutiny in his blue eyes, the easy affection and reassurance in the hand on his wife’s shoulder, the way Lorena relaxed with him there, telling Garcia about all he needed to know. Yes, they were a team. Yes, she was happy, radiant. Yes, she’d found the life she deserved. Her children, her passion to help people in need, a husband who clearly adored her and was home every night and probably never woke her screaming nightmares in any of a half-dozen different languages. Lorena was happy. Something shivered within him, and broke, shattered to dust. He wasn’t sure whether its absence was hollowness or relief. 

But it relieved him to find it gave the clarity he needed to steel his mind and nerves and aching heart. He reached in his pocket. “My apologies for having alarmed you. I’m Agent Flynn of the NSA,” he flipped the badge open, still feeling the strangeness of having it, “and this is my partner, Agent Christopher of DHS.”

Tim’s eyes went wide, and he glanced over his shoulder towards where the kids still waited, presumably needing to be dropped off at school and daycare. “Is there an investigation here in the neighborhood?” No, better not make them freak out worrying that there was something going on around here.

Lorena scanned the badge intently, making sure she actually read it thoroughly, and he saw her eyes go to his face, directly comparing the picture to his features. Good. He’d known she wouldn’t take a badge flashed at her at face value. She’d always been a savvy one. Wiser than Tim, apparently. “What can we do for you, Agent Flynn?” He gripped harder on the part of his mind and heart that would have let loose the aching echo of her voice saying _Garcia_ , and ruthlessly stuffed it back securely in its corner.

Denise sat silent, letting him do the talking, but he felt her alertness, ready to jump in if he faltered. “Denise is looking for a house for her family, and her realtor said that this address was on the market.” He pulled off his sunglasses and gave them a sheepish schoolboy grin. “We were on an investigation this morning and figured we’d detour for a few minutes and check it out. Don’t tell our bosses, mm? We’re giving up a bathroom break for this!”

Tim chuckled, giving him a conspiratorial wink. Goddammit. Some petty part of him didn’t really want to like the man, but he’d had sense enough to appreciate Lorena, to give her a happy life for it, and that was all he could have ever asked, right? This must be the weird feeling others had seeing their ex with a new lover. But then, he’d felt that for a moment with Danil and Bern. Happy that Danil had gotten out of Chechnya when it all went to hell, when the land he’d fought for turned into something darker and dangerous. Happy he made it to Germany, where being a gay man wouldn’t get him declared an abomination and executed. Happy he made peace with that part of himself, found a lasting love. But still...for that moment, he’d felt that sharp twist of envy. 

But that was complicated. Not too hard to feel compelled to be happy for Danil finding love because he'd so narrowly escaped death. Though it wasn’t like this was any less complicated. Lorena might not know it, but she’d escaped death also. 

“Must have caught you early,” Denise chimed in. “The ‘For Sale’ sign isn’t even up yet.”

“You sure you have the right address?” Tim asked, all warm congeniality now. “Sorry to disappoint you, ma’am,” he nodded to Denise, “but Rena loves this house. Been in her family for four generations. She’ll kill me if I ever suggest we sell.”

“Damn straight I will,” Lorena said, with that fierce grin he’d loved. 

“Wait,” Denise said. “Wait just a second. What street is this?”

“Assumption Lane,” Lorena replied. 

He sighed, a slow exhalation of resigned exasperation. “Denise, I saw the email. The house Lucy told you about was on Assumption _Drive_. Did you put it in the GPS wrong?” He laughed, leaning an elbow on the frame of the open window, and looking back over his shoulder at Denise. “Do we need to go get the old Rand McNally map books back for you?”

She scowled and four months ago he’d have worried that expression would mean being locked up in solitary again, but right then he would just enjoy being able to make her annoyed. He hadn’t thought about it consciously ever since Lucy demanded Christopher let him out, but no, apparently he still hadn’t completely forgiven her for the whole SWAT team and imprisonment deal. But that had been a different person, so--where did that leave him now? “Oh, shut up, Garcia, I’m not _that_ old.”

The act and the interplay felt effortless, a lot easier than the cold disdain on her part and the smartass rejoinders on his to needle her. They must have worked like this before in the past two years. Not that bone deep, soul deep accord he seemed to have with Lucy, that feeling of being so seen and known in a way that left him alternately exposed and comforted. But he and Denise apparently could act flawlessly in a professional harmony, without even really trying. He’d felt that before with a few others like Stiv. The thing just clicked, and best not to question it.

The steel wouldn’t hold for too long. “We’d best let you get your kids to school and you to work. So sorry for the mistake.” _So sorry for everything, Lorena. Everything I couldn ‘t give you._ He shouldn’t ask. But he knew her tells so well, and Lorena wore her heart on her sleeve. “There was one thing, though. Might as well ask, since it’s an investigation we’re on. Have either of you ever heard the name ‘Rittenhouse’?”

“No,” Tim answered, no recognition in his eyes, and Lorena shook her head. No, there was nothing. Not unless she’d become so totally different from the woman he’d known. “Good luck with the investigation, and your house hunt, Agent Christopher.” With that they turned away, Tim’s arm slipping around Lorena’s waist with the easy familiarity of years, and they walked back towards their kids. Towards their house where a nightmare had never happened in October of 2014, with the round turret with the peaked roof that Iris had alternately pretended was a rocketship and a princess tower, and maybe Holly or Marissa did that too. Maybe, if he was a lucky man, something of Iris’ sweetness and brilliance and compassion existed in either or both of them. With Lorena as their mother, it seemed likely.

He made himself look away. He couldn’t help but say it, too lowly for her to hear. “ _Doviđenja,_ Lorena Wrangell.” _Be well. Be nothing but well. Maybe I didn’t bring you back in the end, but here you are anyway, and I can’t be sorry for that. And I wish you and your children and your husband joy, always._ Raising his voice, he told Denise, “Let’s go,” pleased at how utterly calm he managed to sound.

She was as good as her word, drove south of the city and found a cop bar she’d apparently been introduced to back circa 1980 when she was a DC cop, old badges and old photos hung on the dark-paneled walls, and bought him a beer. He got the sense this was her hangout whenever she got recalled to DC from California for an investigation or inquiry, and felt oddly touched she’d bring him into that circle. 

“What do you want to do?” she asked him, nursing her own pint.

He smiled wryly. “Buy a whole bottle, maybe, but in the end, more trouble than it’s worth.” But that had been his father’s way of dealing with the pain. “So...instead, I’ll keep busy.” He’d choose his mother’s path instead.

God, his mother in 1969, young and beautiful, eyes shining ferociously, telling him there was nothing she wouldn’t do for her son, no lengths she wouldn’t go to if someone hurt him. That she’d never, ever be able to let go. That fire had been dimmed embers by the time he came along, but she’d still done her best to protect him from his father’s rages, to teach him, to read to him, to inspire him. He’d been grateful to hear that she’d still been able to love that much. 

That was the trouble. Maria Parker Thompkins Flynn had never been able to let go of James and Gabriel Thompkins, and older and wiser now, he could admit that left its echo in his own life right from birth. She’d never moved on, until the day she died. 

So easy to swear there was nothing he wouldn’t do for Iris. He’d thought, war-tested and spy-savvy as he was, that he knew a hell of a lot back in 2014. He’d still been naive. There were lines he crossed that he shouldn’t, and only known too late that he’d become someone who could never again deserve them. Because those lines went only one way. You could never go back. And coolly erasing--killing--four children to bring back his one, even if she’d been everything to him, was a line he wasn’t willing to cross. After John Rittenhouse, he couldn’t help but be relieved to know that. 

He’d loved her, and he would have fought for her to the very end. But he couldn’t bring her back without causing so much pain to others. She would never have wanted that. Especially not from her father, because she’d been so young, still able to believe in him as a hero. Never grew up enough to reach the points of disillusionment, maturity, and then finally wisdom and acceptance of human frailty when it came to one’s parents. He would never forget her. But she would be safe forever now from the monsters. There was no other way. Nothing else that he could do without becoming a worse monster than he’d been before.

All that was left was to hunt down Rittenhouse, hunt down Emma, and take her out. If he couldn’t restore Iris, he’d still settle for vengeance and making sure Emma couldn’t murder anyone else’s children.

_Emma handed him a bottle of beer, sitting down beside him on the scratched pew. “Not totally frosty yet, but it’ll do. Fridge is a heck of a miracle, huh?” She glanced around at the stained glass, eyes going comically wide and looking up to the ceiling. “No offense or sacrilege intended.”_

_“Well, Jesus turned water into wine,” he said. “So he probably would appreciate a cold beer on demand.”_

_She laughed at that. “Amen to that, brother.”_

_Brother? He turned that over in his head. She wasn’t Stiv. God, if only Stiv were still here. He wasn’t going to touch Danil with all of this. Anthony kept moving further and further away, and already he looked for the knife in the back that he sensed was coming. And Lucy...he didn’t know what had happened. But whatever that journal promised was obviously wrong. Maybe she was Rittenhouse herself, and she’d written that damn journal just to draw him out. But she seemed too ignorant, too amusingly self-righteous for that. Besides, if she was Rittenhouse, she or her pet Delta boy could have killed him readily by now. One more anonymous body in the past._

_So she wasn’t Rittenhouse, but she wasn’t what she’d promised. Not an ally, not a partner. A pain in the ass obstacle except for those few flickers of giving a damn, but then she went and did something like insist on letting John Rittenhouse live. Maybe she wasn’t wrong...but...he shook his head. He couldn't make sense of it. The journal, the broken promises, even his future self standing there in that rathole in Brazil next to their time machine swearing he'd get Lorena and Iris back. Lucy was an enigma that he’d honestly exhausted himself trying to solve, and he was so very tired. So tired of fighting this fight and doing it alone._

_Maybe he could do worse than find an ally who’d lost someone to Rittenhouse, who’d seen their darkness and fled just like he had, then turned back to fight with everything they had left._

_He clinked his bottle against hers. “Amen.”_

She’d played him sweetly as a Stradivarius. Preyed on his doubts, his loneliness, his moral and mental fatigue. Gotten him to tell her things, because Lucy wasn’t there to tell. Though at least he’d never shown her the journal or fully explained it. It felt almost embarrassing at that point to be doing what the damn journal told him to, written by a woman who kept showing up just to screw with his plans, so he didn’t want to explain. But he’d told her other things. About Lorena and Iris, about Rittenhouse. About how if not for Iris and his being too old to do it himself, some days he might simply jump to 1993 and save his wife’s high school love so she’d never meet him, and gladly walk away from all of it.

_She nimbly twisted the wires together in the Mothership. “You and Anthony did a heck of a job with this plutonium battery. Bet Connor’s pissed he never thought of it.” She grinned at him, brushing her red hair back from her forehead. “Anthony tells me you planned quite the raid to get it. Some real Ocean’s Eleven type stuff. Guess we’re lucky that before Rittenhouse you obviously tried to be the clean Captain America type.” She shrugged. “Or Captain Croatia. Captain...Croamerica? Whatever. Anyway--I thought about what you said. About your wife’s high school boyfriend. We could find someone young enough to go and make sure his stupid drunk teenage ass gets home that night.”_

_“Born after June of 1993? They’d be only 23 at most. Young to handle a mission like that alone.” But then he’d been fighting in Kosovo at 23 himself, fighting in Croatia at 15._

_“Perfect age to get a 18-year-old home,” she pointed out. “All it would take is them going to that party and offering him a ride.”_

_“I can’t do that. I save my wife that way, I knowingly sacrifice my little girl.” She’d shot him a look of sympathetic understanding._

Fool that he was, he’d handed Emma the knife to stab him with, and showed her exactly how best to twist it. He shouldn’t have been surprised when she obliged. Between them, it was...strangely personal.

Even more so, now. She’d deliberately wiped Iris from history. She’d brought Lorena back, given her the life she’d deserved, and she had to know--and enjoy--how utterly caustic it was for him to see that the fucking cancer that was Rittenhouse was responsible for Lorena’s enjoying a happy, full, rich life. She’d stolen that from him too. 

Finishing his beer, grateful Denise hadn’t insisted he talk about it, he said, “If we have time, we should go to the range. You said you needed to clear me there before I go back on-mission.” He wasn’t sitting the next one out. He wasn’t sitting any of them out, short of their being later than 1975 or him being dead, until this was finished.

“Nobody’s calling about an emergency, so we might as well.” She looked at him for a long moment, watching his face and carefully considering. Looking for the fine line between determined resolve and fanaticism, and honestly, he wasn’t a hundred percent sure where he fell right at the moment, but he couldn’t slow down right now and think about it. If he did, he’d probably end up trying to plead Jiya into piloting the damn Lifeboat to go find Emma. Well. That was an improvement. At least he wouldn’t be kidnapping anyone this time. He’d ask. He’d even say _please_.

Go find Emma simply so he could get it done and kill her. Maybe that was an idea. Maybe that would unravel all of this and he could have another chance at fixing it. He could get more information from Connor--she’d been born in 1987, but that didn’t help, because he wouldn’t go after a kid, and she’d gone west with her mom to get away from her abusive asshole father. Fine. He could wait for the so-called "Lifeline" upgrade to be ready. Go find her at CalTech and put a bullet in her head before she ever went to Mason Industries. Send a message to Rittenhouse and--what? Get his family killed in 2007, Lorena dead before Iris was ever even born, instead of 2014? He closed his eyes, trying to keep the need to scream, to swear, to throw something, locked down tight. 

_Gift._ In German, it meant “poison”. Truly apt in this case. Denise and probably Connor might look at him like he was worth something because Emma had cursed him with that little gift also, the appearance of being a far better man than he was. But he knew better. So did Jiya and Wyatt and Lucy, if Lucy truly thought about it. When his back was against the wall, seemed like he’d become a man whose first answer to the problem was apparently to identify who he could kill to solve it.

His arm was steady enough at the range to get her approval. He managed even the rifle and shotgun without much trouble, though from the shotgun, he could tell the massive kickback from a flintlock against the shoulder would hurt like hell, and his arm was getting a bit tired already by the time she put him through his paces. But he could take it. A little pain was nothing. He would work through that. 

By the time they got back to Gettysburg after lunch, which he skipped because he honestly thought he might be sick if he ate anything, he headed right for his room and changed into a sleeveless t-shirt and gym pants, heading out to the barn. The bag was open, Wyatt hiding beneath whatever rock he was under these days. The whole building was deserted. Jiya must have been sleeping, finally. Good. It meant he wouldn’t have to talk to anyone. 

So he sat and carefully wrapped up his hands and set to work, wondering what Emma’s next gambit might be. Wyatt and Jiya seemed beneath her notice except as pawns on the chessboard. Rufus was collateral. She’d fired so wildly that she could have killed anyone of them on that porch. Dr. Kovac--was she Croatian, or a husband or wife?--was right. He could have easily died if the bullet went any differently than it had. But Emma seemed bored with toying with Rufus. Garcia himself was a much better playground for messing with his head now that she’d backstabbed him and revealed her true colors. But Lucy...Lucy, Emma genuinely hated.

How long had he been out here? Twenty minutes, thirty? He didn’t know. Long enough to be covered in sweat. His shoulder burned, the weakened muscles pushed too hard with every punch, with the fatigue from keeping his guard up, but that didn’t matter. All those months Lucy, Rufus and Wyatt spent chasing him, and the bruises and the stitches and broken ribs and fingers hadn’t stopped him from pushing forward. All just inconveniences, and this wouldn’t stop him either. But it was the worst injury he’d had in twenty years, and he didn’t have that effortless resilience like he did when he barely more than a kid and hiding in the mountains of Chechnya, and Danil dragged him to the field hospital to recover. Forty-three year old recognizing he wasn’t as young as he used to be, starting to feel his own age and mortality settling in his bones, and strongly wanting to deny it. His own personal wartime mid-life crisis. How embarrassingly droll. Well, at least his denial wasn’t about fragile ego. He wouldn’t go buy a “glaringly obvious in my insecurity” red Corvette and chase women young enough to be his–no, he didn't have a daughter now. Women twenty years younger than him.

The fight was still out there, and he needed to keep going. Besides, it wasn’t like they kept him around for his scintillating wit anyway. He was their attack dog, meant to help guard them, and that was fine. He shouldn’t hope for more, because he wasn’t much better than that at his core. So better be the best damn attack dog he could. What he had to give, he’d have to, he’d push as hard as he needed, because there was no other answer. The six of them were it: _vive la Resistance_. He couldn’t fail again. The image of Rufus’ face, the astonishment and disbelief and growing fear at feeling he was actually dying–not the first comrade he’d seen with that expression. And if he didn’t get himself back in fighting shape quickly, it might not be the last.

He knew Emma well enough. Devious and manipulative as she was, she was also perfectly capable of a quick flip of the switch to a brutally, coldly effective show of force. Emma’s Rittenhouse would be even more dangerous, because she would be willing to attack far more aggressively, and far more personally. She would give no quarter.

Benjamin Cahill and Carol Preston, amoral cultists as they were, had at least been unwilling to see Lucy hurt. That immunity was now off the table. He couldn’t…he couldn’t…he’d pushed as hard as he could that night, stumbling along and people had been making annoyed comments about damn drunks. He’d been seeing black spots swim in his vision by the time he got there and every breath was searing agony, but God, it almost wasn’t enough. Because if he’d been any later to make it to that alley–he couldn’t even finish that thought. Punctuated it instead with another vicious jab to the bag, followed it up with a solid kick, and the aching pain in his chest, the reminder of failure, felt well deserved.

Suddenly the whole thing seemed to turn as one single nightmare, like a thaumatrope, that 19th century child’s toy, the disk with a bird on one side and a cage on the other. Spin it fast enough and the two pictures combined, the bird suddenly trapped in the cage. _Lorena, the bloodstain on Iris’ pink painted wall, her legs in those old pale green tartan pajama pants, and he couldn’t see her face, had to run as the bullets began to fly, but he knew what he’d see, and the mental horror was vivid enough. Lucy, a crumpled heap in that dim Chinatown alley, face purple and unseeing eyes wide, skirts in disarray and boots scuffed from kicking helplessly as she’d struggled against Emma’s strangling hands. Lorena, smiling that gloriously bright smile of hers at Tim Wrangell, helping her five-year-old daughter into their car, happy and safe because she’d never heard of Garcia Flynn. Lucy, her hand in Wyatt’s, smiling up at him with that beaming guileless joy, finally happy for once._ Lorena and Lucy, death and rejection and imagination and memory, and it didn’t matter which was which because in that moment they were all one and the same, melded together into a concentrated searing stab of pain. 

Sick and dizzy, not sure if it was from his thoughts or having pushed himself so hard when he was that weak, he backed off from the bag, leaning over, hands resting on his thighs, breathing hard either from fatigue or trying to keep the tears in, or both. He knew exactly where this went. Tried to hide it from Denise but he couldn’t hide it from himself. Knew he was coming apart at the seams, could see the abyss right there beckoning again and _thank you asshole Nietzsche_ for that, but damned if he could stop it, damned if he could stand it. There was only so much burden one person could bear alone before they snapped beneath its weight. He’d already broken once. Might as well break again, and maybe try to turn the shards into something that would cut Emma Whitmore and Rittenhouse so badly they’d bleed right out.

A pair of denim-clad legs and small feet in dark grey and black cherry sneakers came into his vision, and somehow he knew. Should have figured right when he was on the verge again she’d find him and somehow, some way offer him a path out of the dark woods, just as she had in São Paulo almost four years ago, just as she’d tried to in Philadelphia in 1780, just as she had in that basement in DC in 1954, just as she had in Oakland Prison mere months ago, and he could have laughed at it--here was the better angel of his nature once again come to save him from his own idiot self. Did she have some kind of bizarre _Garcia Flynn is losing his shit again_ sense? Somehow he couldn’t help but be grateful for that. He looked up into Lucy’s face, then straightened up with an effort, giving her a tired grin. “Well, Lucy, I suppose you want to talk? Let me go shower.” Try to pull himself together so maybe, this time, he could have a couple scraps of dignity during these conversations they had where once again, for some unexplained reason, she thought he was worth the effort to save his soul.


	4. 3x01: First Amendment, Second Chance (Lucy: Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, June 2018)

Sitting there picking at lunch, Lucy knew that she should have gone to Flynn last night. She’d known something was up when they’d heard about the jumps to Baltimore, and seen Flynn’s face change, how he swallowed hard and breathed in deep as if bracing himself for a firing squad. But then it had been Denise to help him try to figure out what went on, and then she’d been sitting there in her room, still dressed in her bodice and skirt and stockings, staring at her hands and thinking once again of Amy. He’d taken that hit now himself, she assumed. His wife and daughter erased, completely. Existing only as memory and in a few photos now stored in the Memory Cache--never, never, ever coming back.

She should have gone down the hall and knocked, but what if he didn’t want company just then? Would she make it worse by imposing on his grief by assuming Lucy Preston Knows Best? Maybe he wanted space in these first few hours. So she’d sat on her bed, trying to read a book on cinema as cultural commentary in the Weimar Republic, trying to failing to read the same paragraph about _Der Blaue Engel_ seven times. Put the book aside, fingers twisting around each other in nervous fidgets, getting off the bed, pacing to the door four or five times, then turning back to go sit restlessly again. Picked up the book, only to put it back down again. Lucy Preston, indecisive mouse. 

She’d gotten as far as his door, raising a hand to knock, listening intently and hearing nothing--no sobs or groans that might have spurred her to go on. Chances were he was asleep already and that was for the best, so why wake him up only so she could give herself a gold star for barging in and doing very little?

Near 3 AM, she heard Denise’s door open and close, and then a few minutes later, a door that must have been Flynn’s. She didn’t hear his footsteps, but then, he moved cat-like, very quiet for such a big man. She looked out her window and saw him headed out to the barn. That decided it. If he was awake, if he hadn’t locked himself in his room, she could at least try. She hurried to pull off the 18th century clothing--bodice, kerchief, several petticoats, pocket, stays, shift, stockings, so many layers, and left it in a crumpled heap on the bed. Hurrying into a pair of athletic capris and a t-shirt, she headed out to the barn too. Saw him there, already talking to Jiya, working on the Lifeboat, and hesitated again. No, he’d found what he needed for the moment, but she felt a curious pang in her chest that he hadn’t come to her, that whatever he’d needed was elsewhere.

She slept fitfully. Dreamed restless dreams of Amy, though the thing that frightened her most was how she was starting to forget. Had the t-shirt Amy wore to Disneyland for her eighth birthday been red or pink? What was the next episode of “Burden of 150 Proof”? The name was _terrible_ , but the scathingly satirical sociopolitical commentary was great, and Carol Preston hadn’t been able to see that her younger daughter had been brilliant and passionate too, even without a PhD, had actually done something to send a message to get people to listen to things and care, as opposed to her older daughter sitting on her ass in a dusty library dwelling on the past. Which crime was it supposed to have been...Jacob Wetterling? Aileen Wuornos? Amy, talking about some terrible liquor she was supposed to pair with that particular crime for the podcast, and she couldn’t even remember, because it had been another of those _Uh huh yeah sure Amy I’m pretending I’m listening to you but not really_ moments. 

No, it had been Aileen Wuornos. Jacob Wetterling had been for later. Because Amy had wanted to talk about the lingering stigma of sex work, and the effects of childhood sexual abuse, and mostly the perception of women as victims. Now she could remember some of the conversation, the bits that helped hook it into place for her and acted as anchors, like when she was little, finally tuning into the TV station by adjusting the antenna exactly right. 

_Amy waving her hands excitedly, in between sipping her Mountain Dew, because her little sister wasn’t hyper enough despite it being 10:30 at night, and Lucy had an exam to give in the morning. ”They think women can’t get angry, can’t get all dark and violent and twisted up inside and lash out. They make jokes, Luce. Jokes about how we’re so cute when we’re mad. That a woman being angry is...is so inconsequential. Powerless. They think we’re so fragile.”_

_Lucy chewed her lip at that. Powerless. Yeah. With her tenure review coming up, she could relate to that all too well. “I actually saw a t-shirt on one of my students the other day. ‘Not fragile like a flower, fragile like a bomb.’ And it had this multicolored bomb, or grenade, or whatever, with a rose on top of it.”_

_“‘Oh, yes. Yes, yes, yes. I like that. I’m absolutely gonna have to find that shirt. Do you know who that’s a quote from? It sounds like it should be someone’s quote.”_

_“Oh come on, Ames, you can do your own research!” Amy left the empty Mountain Dew can on the kitchen counter, off to go save the world one passionate call-out at a time, and Lucy sighed, smiled, and chucked the can in the small blue recycling bin at the end of the counter._

Women and anger. Adorable. Trivial. Easily dismissed. No violence that mattered, no threat. No danger to anyone.

_”Lucy...please.” Emma looking up at her, though there was no fear in those green eyes. Resignation? Or was she only not believing, even here with the barrel of a revolver pressed to her forehead, that harmless pathetic Lucy Preston could ever pull the trigger?_

_She was shaking, the rage filling her until she was surprised she couldn’t actually taste it, like blood, all hot and dark and metallic. She should drag Emma back to the others, probably. Arrest her and see her brought to justice. Whatever justice they could provide--throw her in some prison and lock away the key like they’d tried to do to Flynn. Bring her back to 2018 and let her live, when her mother’s body and Rufus’ body were here in 1888, when there hadn’t even been anything of Amy to bury because she never existed. **Not this time. You erased my sister permanently, and you were so smug about doing it. You shot my mom. You shot Rufus. Could have killed Jiya or Flynn or Wyatt. No. You’re not taking anyone else from anyone. You’re dead, you absolute psycho.**_

_The fury within her was so immense that her body couldn’t contain it, and it seemed like any moment it would split her skin. But it wasn’t white-hot berserker rage. She knew exactly what she was doing, putting a bullet in the head of an injured woman lying there on the ground, weaponless, begging for her life, and she didn’t give a single damn. Unlike with Jesse James, this time there was no doubt, no hesitation. The fury wiped all that away, and left icy cold calm clarity. All it would take was one small twitch, only a few pounds of pressure. She looked down at Emma’s face one last time, and tightened her finger against the trigger._

She’d felt the power in her rage, but maybe Amy was right. Terrifying as it was to be so transported by that emotion, it had been ineffectual. She’d been harmless in the end. She’d failed, because the stupid revolver was out of bullets. Just like she’d failed by being overpowered by Emma, failed again once Flynn got there, because she’d shot his gun empty in a frenzy and not hit Emma a single Goddamn time.

The man dragged himself off that porch, chased after her, chased Emma off, and then sat there in a filthy alley and held her while she cried herself sick at being so terrified of what she’d given herself over to, and the bitter shame of that towering rage being so fucking _useless_ , and the sheer exhaustion of being unable to go on. He’d done all that after being shot, half-dead himself. He’d run Emma off with a single shout of Lucy’s name, relentless and terrifying, and she couldn’t even fight back properly. 

He’d been so good to her in the bunker. Been gentle, kind, understanding, getting her through the worst of the post-Wyatt nightmare. Talking to her, encouraging her, trying to keep her off the vodka bottle and the despair. What the heck did she do for Flynn in return? Some future version of herself went back in time--because she had to believe it now, she’d seen that fierce, hard version of herself the same as everyone else had. Gave him that magic diary, saved him from killing himself, and turned him into a guided missile to aim at Rittenhouse. The woman he’d talked about, the woman who’d so briefly popped into the bunker and dropped plans on them and then vanished with almost nothing else to say, felt unrecognizable.

So what did she, Lucy Joan Preston circa 2018, do for him? Said a few nice things, maybe, rather than treating him like an unwelcome pest, but compared to everything he’d done for her, she felt so foolish and weak and needy. Felt uncomfortably like a parasite, not a friend.

Jiya had filled her in on the actual situation while Denise and Flynn were down in Baltimore, working on the Lifeboat together, and her heart sank. It was even worse than Lorena and Iris being erased permanently. Emma had boxed him in, made it so he could never completely undo it without deliberately destroying his wife’s new life, her new children. The man she’d met at the _Hindenburg_ , the ruthlessly determined son of a bitch, might not have given a damn who he put through the woodchipper, but would he do it now?

All she’d needed was one more bullet in that revolver. Either that or the ability to hit the broad side of a barn with Flynn’s pistol. She hated herself even more now. 

They’d all been drifting for the last month, tied together by the shared purpose of getting the Lifeboat repaired and then upgraded and saving Rufus. But the glue between them was missing. It was like they were all animals in a zoo, each in their own separate enclosure, walls between them. Jiya mourning Rufus. Wyatt brooding over Jessica. Flynn recovering from being shot. And she had her mother, Rufus...and yes, if she was being honest, she’d been sometimes avoiding the possibility of being alone with a certain Croatian.

 _Why are you here?_ She’d said it without thinking. God, the man had actually knelt in front of her, and something in her had _known_ from the look on his face, something both gentle and anxious. She could almost thank Wyatt for the interruption, though she couldn’t thank him for much else over these last months.

She couldn’t have heard Flynn say it, because she wasn’t ready to deal with that. There were things that came with someone declaring their love for you. She’d known that when she and Wyatt kissed in Hollywood. It came with expectation of the next steps of the dance. If he’d finished those words, it was either kiss him and move full speed ahead, or else leave him there on his knees, totally crushed. No middle ground, right?

She could have kissed him, slept with him, and it would have been good. Fun, even. But she’d sensed he needed more than that. Flynn clearly didn’t do anything less than full intensity, whether it was being a sarcastic asshole, trying to destroy Rittenhouse, or...get his dead wife back.

Yeah. There was that too. She’d taken the leap with Wyatt, and found that he didn’t catch her. Left her instead broken and bleeding when his wife came back. She couldn’t have that happen again, and Lorena was alive now. Of course Flynn would fight for her, wouldn’t he? Shouldn’t he? Whatever he might have been ready to say, it was off the table now, and she tried to pretend she didn’t feel a sharp pang of regret at that. Looked like it was her lot in life to always be the afterthought. She shouldn’t expect better anyway. Lucy Preston, not so pretty, not so clever, not so brave. Couldn’t even save herself, so how could she save anyone else, including Flynn four years ago? Apparently her scary Ripley doppelganger from another timeline could do that, but she couldn’t make that woman fit. Too different, like an identical twin, but a totally separate person. 

So what was where she’d left it with him. Not wanting to talk about those words he’d left hanging. Not wanting to talk about breaking down in his arms in that alley while he murmured low words of comfort to her, badly wounded himself. Not wanting to admit to him what he hadn’t seen, that darkness rising in her, that she hadn’t been simply overpowered and brutalized by Emma, that she wasn’t that angel he seemed to think she was. Not really wanting to think or feel because she’d been nothing but a flaming dumpster fire of emotions even since her own mother took her prisoner. 

But she could admit she’d been a bad friend to him while he recovered from an injury, and she’d known damn well it was that severe when Denise took him to Baltimore and they didn’t come back that night because Flynn got booked right into the OR. She’d been a bad friend to let him deal with this whole Lorena mess alone last night. If nothing else, she should take the upper hand on this and let him know, as gently as she could, that it was OK. That he owed her nothing, but she hoped maybe they could still be friends and it wouldn’t be weird. Didn’t hope for that, secretly. It hadn’t worked out all that well with any man she’d slept with, the latest example especially, and no, she hadn’t had sex with Flynn, but she supposed perhaps sleeping in his bed counted for close enough for the purposes of rejection. 

She was so incredibly tired of failing, but she was even more tired of hiding. She still hadn’t gotten beyond that same paragraph, and it wasn’t that _Der Blaue Engel_ wasn’t interesting. She put the book down again and went downstairs to the kitchen, saw Denise out in the living room, knitting needles out and clicking furiously away. “Is Flynn--”

“Saw him headed out to the barn like half an hour ago,” Jiya called from behind the open fridge door. 

She crossed in front of the ugly ‘70’s vintage couch--burnt orange, of course--and leaned in, one hand on the arm of the couch. “Is he--”

Denise looked up at her, a troubled pucker in her brow and concern in her eyes. “Garcia’s not talking to me. Not much, anyway.” 

She sighed, nodded. “Can I borrow the keys? Get him out of here?” The farmhouse was better than the bunker. They could always go for a walk outside, get some utterly welcome fresh air and sunlight. Though the muggy summer air of southeastern Pennsylvania wasn’t exactly a welcome revelation to her. But Denise held the keys to the only car and they knew it, and any requests to borrow it had to get approval. She wasn’t exactly tight-fisted in handing over the keys for a short ride to the grocery store or to head into town, probably sensing the bunker had driven all of them half-crazy, but it still smacked a little of high school and asking Mom to borrow the car. They all understood good behavior and no public messes or ruckuses were expected. 

She ruthlessly shut down any thoughts of Carol Preston right then, borrowing the car in high school or otherwise. “I mean, I know you two were just out, but…” But even though it was easy enough to find a quiet corner of this old farmstead to be alone, unlike the bunker, there was something to be said for putting a few miles of distance.

“Can’t hurt for you to give it a try,” Denise answered, reaching in her purse and handing over the keys to the blandly nondescript black Civic. Not big enough to fit six, she’d noted. Any hurried escape would have to be in the Lifeboat.

Slipping the keys in her jeans pocket, she nodded her thanks, crossing to the back door in the kitchen and heading out towards the barn. She found him there, giving the punching bag a fairly hard workover, hitting and kicking it in a sheer frenzy like it was every Rittenhouse person he probably wanted dead right now. Standing there, she wasn’t sure exactly what to say or do. Better to let him get it out of his system first? The murderously angry intensity practically boiled off him in waves. She was no fighter, which Emma had proved brutally enough, but she could see Flynn was generally slower than usual overall, and that his right arm specifically seemed to lag.

Then he finally stopped, backed off a few steps from the bag. Ran a hand through his sweat-soaked hair, then leaned over, wrapped-up hands braced right above his knees, breathing hard like he’d run a marathon. Exhaustion written in every line of his body, and somehow, she didn’t think it was only physical, because that occasional hitch in his breathing didn’t seem only like the pant of exhaustion. She stepped forward slowly, cautiously, having the sensation that she was doing something like approaching a wounded tiger.

He must have seen her sneakers enter his field of vision because still hunched over, he turned his head to look up at her. She hadn’t seen that look in his eyes since she night she shielded John Rittenhouse from him, all anger and devastation and pain. He half-nodded, still catching his breath, as if there was some unspoken conversation they’d had already, then looked away. A few moments and he stood up slowly, as if the effort to remain upright was a struggle against a crushing weight. Maybe it was. He grinned at her, more like a brief baring of his teeth than any actual humor. “Well, Lucy, I suppose you want to talk?” He gestured a hand in the direction of himself. “Let me go shower.”

“I’ll be by the car.” She really didn’t want to go back into the farmhouse and try to make conversation with anyone right now. “Jiya’s headed out here, Connor’s on the phone getting parts, and Wyatt’s out for a walk.” Somehow it felt important to let him know that he could probably slip into the house for a quick shower, and not be bothered. Though Wyatt was out for a lot of walks these days, and often didn’t return until dark. Avoided the rest of them. Another thing she couldn’t fix, and didn’t quite know how, but she also kept having the curious surge of irritation that maybe it wasn’t all _hers_ to fix.

Flynn nodded his thanks at that, grabbing a towel from the log bench along the wall and wrapping it around his shoulders. Already by the time he reached the barn door he looked calmer, more put together again.

After he left, she looked at the punching bag. _Poor pathetic Princess Lucy,_ Emma’s voice in her head mocked her. _I never took anything from you that you hadn’t already given up, because that’s what you do. You give up, and you run. Carol Preston’s pampered little girl never had to learn how to get her hands dirty, did she? Never had to learn how to actually fight for what she wants._ She balled up her own fist, and hit the bag. She might as well have slammed her hand into the steel hull of the Lifeboat for as ineffectual as it was. “Oh, fuck you, Whitmore,” she muttered, shaking her hand out, though in some ways the sting of it felt good.

He met her out at the car maybe twenty minutes later, showered and dressed in a clean t-shirt and jeans. She didn’t have much of a plan. Get him somewhere, maybe try to get him to talk. Brilliant. Heading over towards town, she glanced over at him at a red light. He didn’t look over at her, arm resting on the window he’d rolled down against the sticky summer heat, sunglasses over his eyes. 

Nowhere seemed to make sense. She hadn’t been here to the town and battlefield proper before, so driving through the rolling green hills and ridges of the Gettysburg National Park, seeing the split-rail barricades and fences and cannons with a verdigris patina defining areas of the battlefield, dozens of monuments dotting the landscape commemorating this state regiment or that, it seemed so unfairly quiet. Like the battle 155 years prior hadn’t happened. But it had, and it had mattered so much to people at that time, left floundering in the wake of death and carnage and devastation.

“You know I appreciate a good history lesson, Lucy, but shouldn’t the tour guide be talking at some point?” Now he turned to glance her way, and the humor was back in his voice, though he couldn’t fully hide his tiredness behind it. “Ah. Cemetery Ridge. Primary defensive position for the Union soldiers. They managed to hold it on the second and third days despite fierce attacks from the Confederates. If they hadn’t…well, guess we all get to speculate on history a bit more than most these days.” He nodded at one monument by the roadside, of a soldier caught mid-stride in a run, bayoneted rifle raised. “That--the First Minnesota. The only Minnesotan regiment in the battle, 262 of them ordered to make a suicide attack against an entire Confederate brigade because they were the only ones available. 82% casualties suffered in five minutes, but they held the ridge that day. Lost a few more on this ridge the next day during Pickett’s Charge too. Unfortunately, Jeff Shaara kind of was a dick and gave all the spotlight to the Maine regiments over on Little Round Top.”

He was talking. That was good, so she pulled over into the small strip of parking lot nearby, got out of the car, and he did the same. This had become her battleground, apparently. She’d have to figure it out from here. “You obviously know more about this battle than me.”

He shrugged slightly. “I’ve probably read more military history than you, Lucy. And I’ve been here before.” He licked his lips in that nervous habit of his. “If it’s all the same, Cemetery Ridge is fine, but I’d prefer to skip the Gettysburg cemetery itself.”

It took her only a moment to follow. _Oh. Lincoln’s dedication address._ Four months after the battle, to dedicate the cemetery at the battlefield, known far and wide as the Gettysburg Address. 

“You’ve been here before?”

“We were in Baltimore often enough. It’s only about an hour to here, Antietam, Bull Run, Harper’s Ferry, plenty of other places. I’d read the books and then go walk the battlefields.” He smiled wryly. “Who knows. Maybe Emma will have some plan here and we’ll get to see the real thing. Yay.”

“Fl--” It struck her then with a hot, awkward stab of shame that Denise had called him _Garcia_ when she’d handed over the car keys, said it so casually and easily. And Lucy herself never had. Not when she drank with him. Not when she said his name as she sobbed in that alley. That felt almost embarrassing now. “Garcia.” That got him to look directly at her, and she couldn’t see behind his sunglasses, but from his sudden stillness, she thought his eyes would have been wide with astonishment. “I haven’t been a good friend to you this last month. I’m sorry.”

He waved a hand dismissively. “It’s nothing.”

“It’s not nothing,” she insisted. “You were--great, these last few months.”

He gave a sharp bark of laughter in reply. “ _O moj Bože_ , am I actually getting a ‘It’s not you, it’s me’ speech? This is a first.”

“Can you be serious?”

That stillness intensified, and it was like she could feel him turning away from her and slipping away. She’d thought once that the menacing Flynn she’d met almost two years ago as an enemy was like wildfire. But that wasn’t right. Fire was brash, impulsive, quickly burned out, and things burned to ash eventually recovered. They either regrew, or were rebuilt. Garcia Flynn not giving a shit was more like a glacier. Icy cold, relentlessly determined, in for the long haul, mercilessly carving up the landscape in his wake and leaving it forever altered, and infinitely more threatening in the end. She saw the echoes of the cold, hard, ruthless man she’d chased and confronted so many times, and the man who’d laughed with her, confided in her, drank with her, taught her to swear in Croatian, held her so gently in that alleyway seemed impossibly distant. “What precisely do you believe I’m not serious about?” he asked, voice dangerously soft, and then he did pull off his sunglasses, green eyes hard as chips of ice. 

It was so much easier to confront him about being an asshole anarchist trying to blow things up, and insist he was wrong. Trying to pierce the armor of that pain only as herself seemed impossible. “What happened? Jiya told me some things, Denise gave a few hints, but...playing Telephone doesn’t help.” It felt only right to take off her own sunglasses, strangely like removing her own small bit of armor.

He sighed, hands dropping to his sides. “Let’s see. Denise apparently recruited me in 2016, got me brought on as a full NSA agent, and I’ve been a member of this team from the beginning. So...that’s pretty weird. Oh, and my wife and daughter never died in our house in Baltimore, because she was never my wife, and so my daughter never even existed.” He bit his lip, arms folding over his chest.

“But you’re going to get Lorena back.”

He looked at her in amazement, shaking his head. “No. No, I’m not. She’s married. Has been for twenty-two years. Good husband. Four kids. She’s happy, Lucy. Really, truly happy. I saw it.” His voice faltered only a little in saying it. “She’s got a much better life than I ever could have given her. Why would I ever insist on undoing that when it ends with her dead on the floor?”

“But you love her.” How could he walk away from that?

“You say that like ‘love’ is some kind of blanket excuse to barge in, take what you want, and completely screw up someone’s life.” He shook his head. “My God, Lucy, your damn mother. If she wasn’t dead already…” He held up his hands, palms out, in front of his chest, in a gesture of surrender. “Sorry. Sorry.” He inhaled deeply, obviously trying to calm himself down. “You love someone, it means caring enough to wanting them to be happy, even when it costs you. And she is happy. And I told you before, when we went after Arnold, I was never going to go back. That she was better off without me. I meant it then. I mean it even more now. So…”

She actually believed him. “Your daughter, though. Iris.”

His eyes slid shut at that, features tightening with pain. “I’m not...I wasn’t...a good man. You know that. But...now, I can’t kill four kids to hope I can bring back my one child.” His voice went soft again, sounding lost and broken and tired. “Emma probably bet on that. She’s given me Sophie’s fucking Choice here. So I have to let Iris go. And I’m going to have to live with that.” 

Her throat felt tight at that. “Emma erased Amy too,” she said, voice barely more than a whisper. “My mom...told her to do it, while I was Rittenhouse’s prisoner. I don’t know exactly what she did, and when, but Emma told me that she made sure it was impossible for Amy to ever come back.” 

His eyes were wide with horror, but there was a glimmer of sympathy. He half-raised a hand as if to touch her, and then dropped it. “Lucy…”

“I don’t blame you.” She shook her head, knowing it was important she said it. “You...you say you’re not a good man. But you are. You at least regret things you did. You made a mistake, but I know you would have tried to put it right. But even if you hadn’t done it, I have to believe Mom would have erased Amy eventually. She’d traded her in for more time with me, she said, to get rid of her cancer, to try to bring me over to Rittenhouse. That was the thing that mattered to her more than Amy. More than me.”

She wasn’t sure she wanted to know what that Croatian curse meant, but whatever he’d just called Carol Preston, it wasn’t good. “Is that what you think I’m doing?” His voice was barely more than a whisper, thick with regret and pain, and he looked away, stuffing his hands into his pockets. “You think I’m like her? Signing away my daughter’s very _existence_ like she meant nothing to me?”

“No. Garcia,” and saying his name again a second time, it felt more right, less forced. “You...you didn’t _choose_ this. Emma did. I know how hard you fought to bring Iris back. How hard you would have fought, to the very end, if there was any way.” _What it’s costing you to let her go._ Because it was searing agony still sometimes to look at how impossible it would be to get Amy back, and how much worse it had to be for a child. 

She overthought, all too often. She knew that. But seeing him standing there, breaking under the weight of the burden thrown on him, she thought of how he’d picked her up out of the dirt in a Chinatown alleyway and held her tightly while she broke down, despite his own pain. Yes, she was tired of taking. Tired of whatever he gave her being against some debt of gratitude to some version of herself that didn’t exist yet, or might never exist, rather than something owed to Lucy herself. 

She looked at him, thinking back to a starlit San Antonio night, the rumble of that Ford truck on darkened country roads. Maybe he’d lied to her in one thing he said that night, telling her that they could still save the people they loved. But it was a lie kindly meant, and he hadn’t known then what Emma had done to Amy. “We’re never getting them back.” It hurt to say it aloud, and say it so decisively. “I know that now. But...but we’ll take Rittenhouse down for Iris, and for Amy. And we’ll never forget them.” She touched his arm, testing the waters first, feeling the surprised tension in him. It felt oddly like gentling a nervous horse. If he wanted to walk away, he could. But he looked down, and his hands eased out of his pockets. Hands open and empty at his waist, arms spread a little as if to say, _I have nothing._

She stepped in, put her arms around him, heart pounding, waiting still for the moment he’d push her away. She closed her eyes in relief as she felt his arms close around her in return, drawing her in tightly. Her head fit easily against his shoulder, tucked up completely underneath his chin with as ridiculously tall as he was. His heart hammering hard right near her cheek, his entire body trembling as the quiet sobs hit him. His left arm occasionally letting go so he presumably could wipe the tears from his face, but then returning right back, cradling the back of her head and holding her close again. _Nobody’s held you like this since…_ Since the wife he’d now never had. It hurt to see him in pain, but she'd cherish the fact that he'd trust her with this.

She hadn’t studied the battle much. She’d looked more at the people in the town, the churches turned into hospitals, the black people terrorized or stolen below the Mason-Dixon line by the Confederates, the destroyed orchards and fields and farms, the endless gravedigging. In 1863 this place had been hell on earth, and for those who had survived it, there were almost two years left to keep fighting, and for the residents of Gettysburg, it was years before it looked anything like normal again. Maybe it helped to see that eventually, there could be peace and green grass again, even in the most horribly war-town places. The sound of children with a tour guide somewhere nearby, excited chatter. Herself, Garcia, Jiya, Wyatt, Denise, and Connor--they were survivors, veterans too now, scarred and scared, and their own war wasn’t done yet. But like those troops, they’d keep fighting to make people free, because to give in meant letting oppression win.

He didn’t let her go yet, even though he was long since calm now. She didn’t let him go either. No excuse except wanting this moment to last, feeling comforted by being there. _You love someone, it means caring enough to wanting them to be happy, even when it costs you._ She shouldn’t say something, because as bad as moment as it had been to push him when she sat there with her mom’s body cooling behind her, this didn’t feel much better given he’d lost his wife, for good, even if he’d already let a future with her go long ago. But she couldn’t not say something, because it felt dishonest. “You weren’t wrong. We only lose if we give up hope.” Her fingers tightened in his shirt. “Because there are other people we love that we can still save, you know.” Rufus, yes: that mission, that goal, was a given. But...she’d do better at trying to save Flynn--Garcia. To give and not just take. She willed him to understand what else she was saying, because they seemed good at making sense of things not spoken aloud. Was it cowardly to not simply say it? Not reach up and pull him down enough to kiss him and make it absolutely clear what she meant? But look at what happened the last time she rushed to kiss a man, afraid to lose the moment and lose him. 

He paused for what felt like an eternity, and she almost hurried to explain she meant Rufus, of course. She heard a faint hum that might have been amusement, felt the vibration of it in his chest. “There’s no hurry. Neither of us is...exactly in a good place right now, huh?” His right arm, down near her waist, pressed against her a little tighter. “Besides, you’re worth the wait.”

That strange feeling she got around him, all light and air, welled up inside of her again. Maybe--maybe it was the release of some kind of burden she hadn’t even realized. No expectations, no pressure, no part to perform, no demands to please, only that same quiet, gentle support he’d been giving her for months now. Oddly delicately put, but exactly what both of them probably needed. She’d had men and women say _I love you_ to her. But... _You’re worth the wait._ Had anyone ever said anything like that to her? No, but...there had been Amy. Amy, who'd teased her, fought with her, annoyed her, cried with her, who called her out when she needed it. Amy, the only one who'd ever loved Lucy without question or condition. But he wasn't asking, wasn't demanding. It was like almost nothing had changed between them, and that felt strangely comforting. What was this? Oh hell, now she almost wanted to cry herself. Maybe they needed to actually manage an embrace that didn’t involve tears before moving on to anything serious.

“I’m not…” Lifting her head from his shoulder enough so she could shake her head, she knew she had to tell him. Couldn’t lie and pretend she was some kind of angel, worth the wait. “I’m not...in that alley. Before you got there. I shot at her while she ran. Somehow hit Emma...in the leg, I guess? Enough that it brought her down for a few seconds. Long enough to…” She took a deep breath, forced herself to say the next words as calmly and evenly as she could. “I had her on her knees with that revolver against her forehead. She looked up at me. Said ‘Please’. And I didn’t care. I was calm as anything when I pulled that trigger. If that gun hadn’t been empty, I’d have splattered her brains all over that alley.”

His hand on her shoulder, he stepped back, and she mourned the loss of that. “Lucy.” She made herself look up at him, seeing the softness in his expression. So maybe his letting her go and stepping back was only because he'd only wanted to look at her while he said this. “You think I’m any man to judge? I could guess. I know what that kind of breakdown looks like.”

She dared to meet his eyes directly. “What’s it look like?”

He looked right back at her, calm and steady. “Like you’ve met your own darkness. You know now what you’re capable of doing, and for a few minutes, you can’t handle it because you’re afraid you’re a monster.” His hand tightened on her shoulder. “You’re not. You’re human, that’s all.”

“I shot Jesse James. Unarmed. Injured. Surrendering. I shot him in the back, Garcia. Because I told myself I had to do it. I was trying to preserve history, and history said Jesse James never made it into custody to be hanged.”

“Well, I shot Abraham Lincoln, and I suppose I preserved history, but mostly I didn’t trust John Wilkes Booth to not fuck it up, and I was debating the whole way there whether it would be better to kill him or see if him surviving might help, and...I think I panicked a bit when I saw you there in that box, so...I win the awful because of assassination contest?” He glanced around a bit nervously. “Ah...I’d better not say that too loudly around here...” His awkwardness was so ridiculous she couldn’t help but give a snort of laughter at it. “I’m not proud of it,” he said, gaze falling from hers.

“I know. But you’ve done your best to be different, and make up for it.” She reached for his hand, oddly moved to keep touching him now that they’d apparently broken that barrier. He didn’t seem to object. “And you _did_ save a dorky teenage JFK, so…” The joke wasn’t absolution, but she tried to make the bleak horror of it something more manageable--laughing to try to keep off the tears seemed appropriate right now. 

_You’re human. You’ve met your own darkness._ But her own rage wasn’t enough to get it done. “I hate to keep asking you to do things for me.”

“Lucy, I will happily get things down off the top shelf. It’s no trouble. I’ll just ask you to get things from low cabinets so I don’t have to kneel.”

“You’re impossible.” She couldn’t help but smile. But then she took a deep breath, and plunged in. “I have...been very lucky in the people on mission protecting me. First Wyatt, and then you too.”

“We both let you down on that last mission.”

“Rufus needed Wyatt more, and you were the walking half-dead, so you’re off the hook for that one.”

“If I’d been to that alley any later…” There was a haunted look in his eyes that she could hardly bear. “Emma’s going to go after you. Your mom, your fa--Benjamin. They’d mess with your life in a lot of ways, without question, and inflict a lot of pain on you to try to bring you into Rittenhouse. But they wouldn’t stand to see you killed. It’s different now.”

“I know.” She’d known it there with Emma’s hands around her neck, and the casual ease with which the older woman had overpowered her. “Emma hates me. And I’m officially on the Rittenhouse hit list. Where the rest of you have been since the beginning. So I don’t want you to protect me. I mean...I want you to have my back. Yes. OK.” Tongue-tied Lucy trying to find the words and hoping he wouldn’t feel offended or rejected. She couldn’t help but feel like Wyatt would be hurrying to reassure her that he had it, that she’d be fine, that he’d always be able to protect her, because that was his job. “But we’re at war. I need to be able to look after myself. I need to be able to have your backs in return. So...I want you to teach me. Teach any of us who'll let you. To fight. To fire a gun properly. To survive when you’re hunted and on the run, because you managed it for years, and that’s what we are right now. So that I’m never, ever going to be fighting for my life again down in the dirt with an evil bitch I probably should have been able to kill with one clear shot. And at this point, I really don’t care which of us gets her so long as she ends up taken down.”

He looked at her, and gave a single nod of acknowledgment, but she took in his smile, the admiration in his eyes. Like he took in her anger and determination and believed she was capable of anything, not cute, not harmless. Because she could be. She _would_ be. All she needed was the chance to learn, and if there was one thing Lucy Preston was very good at, it was learning. _Not fragile like a flower, fragile like a bomb. You’re damn right, Amy, I need that shirt._


	5. 3x02: Midnight Train to Baltimore (Wyatt: Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, July 2018)

He’d turned eighteen on April 16th, 2001. At that point, about all Wyatt had lined up was getting through senior year because Jessica pushed him to it. _You’re no dummy, Wyatt, so go get your diploma. You may want it later._ Planned to keep working in Kenny’s garage probably, because he was good at it, something where he could keep his hands busy and feel the comfort of that and of producing something, being able to look at his work at the end of the day with satisfaction. El Cruce wasn’t all that exciting, and Jessica was the one who talked about big dreams sometimes, but he knew what to expect, and that was OK. 

Mostly, just get the hell out of the holding pattern he’d been in since things finally came to a head between him and his old man with him driving the car into the lake as a pointed “fuck you”. Got the beating of his life for that and the moment he got his license at sixteen, he’d paid a couple hundred dollars for an old beater Chevy, packed a few things, and never went back to the old double wide again. Fixed the car up over the next six months because Kenny let him keep it there, buy parts gradually at cost. Ending up running the good ol’ Married Juana--and other things but it was better to not ask--across the border on weekends. Crashing in friends’ houses whose parents had a spare room, who all knew exactly what Don Logan was and wouldn’t call CPS, and them making furtive phone calls to Marian Logan to let her know her boy was still OK. West Texas: it had its drawbacks, but clannish as they were, they looked out for each other.

Mostly--waiting. Waiting for _something_ to happen. To turn eighteen, to graduate, to finally be free, to marry Jessica, and put all the dark and troubling shit behind him for good. To start the rest of his life, to be in control of his own fate.

Senior year had been in session for precisely 5 days when they all woke up to the news about the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, the plane crashed in the middle of nowhere in Pennsylvania. He hadn’t hesitated. _Finally_ something was happening, and he knew with a bone-deep certainty what he was meant to do. By September 30th, he’d walked into an Army recruiting office and enlisted. Married Jessica on October 10th at the courthouse. They’d honeymooned in Florida though the car barely got them there and back. He went to Basic in November, and since then…he’d had that certainty of knowing what he was doing and why. Basic and then Green Berets and then Delta, the elite, the best, the brightest, because he was _damn fucking good_ at what he did, and it was like a light bulb went on and he found his ambition. All he’d needed was a good fire lit under his ass. Got the GED, got a degree in PoliSci because with the GI benefits he might as well, they were good about remote courses, and the challenge had been actually a welcome one. Learned to speak Farsi and Arabic to go with his high school German and his decent Spanglish. 

Jessica was right. He was smart, and he’d been meant to be more than that aimless West Texas mechanic. The trick was to always look forward, keep putting one foot in front of the other. Never look back. But now...seemed like he could do nothing else.

_Blood flowing warm over his fingers in a steady pulsing stream--arterial spray. Rufus’ face as the light left his eyes, Jiya pleading with him, and him sitting there trying to plug a would he knew full well was fatal. All he could do was make sure a friend didn’t die alone. A friend he’d helped kill._

_Jessica’s face as she told him she was pregnant, aglow with hope. Her face later, in that Chinatown alley, and it wasn’t exactly in the Army Standard Ops manual what to do when your wife looked you in the eyes, told you that she and the kid you’d now probably never see– **my** baby, she’d said, not **our** baby, and in that moment a bullet wound would have been easier to bear–had a better family in the psycho elitist cult than with you, and that you weren’t enough, that you had never, ever been enough._

He’d left Jessica behind and he’d been the one to go have adventures and went and changed. He’d failed her. And now he was paying for it. A kid he’d never know. For six weeks he’d started to dream about that possibility. Hoped for a little girl, honestly, because a boy...the idea was like barbed wire wrapped around his mind and heart. Generally terrified and enthralled both--this was his second chance that he’d never dreamed would come to pass since Jessica never came home that night in 2012, and his life became an endless nightmare. She was alive and he was going to be a father, so he couldn’t fuck it up, and he would be so much better than his old man, he had to be, but _how_? 

Rufus dead, and Lucy may have tried to tell him it wasn’t on him, but he knew it was. Jiya’s baited comments, and he deserved them after what she’d been through: kidnapped, lost in time, losing Rufus. Lucy’s quiet understanding, and he wished like hell he could turn back the clock to Hollywood and Jessica had never come back and maybe, just maybe, they could have had something beautiful rather than one night he couldn’t forget. And then he felt the guilt of wishing Jessica dead again--and then he felt the anger and wished she _was_ dead sometimes, wished he could kill her himself given how she’d lied with everything in her, heart and mind and soul and body, and felt even more sick at the dark thoughts. 

About the only semi-normal thing was Flynn and his usual vague contempt for everyone around him except Lucy, but fuck Flynn anyway. All right, maybe not fuck Flynn entirely because he’d been launched into his own Rittenhouse-sponsored nightmare--for the second time--and come back from Baltimore close mouthed. He’d tried to ask Lucy what was up with everyone’s least favorite Slavic terrorist, but she’d shook her head and refused to say. It pissed Wyatt off, though, had to be honest, hearing that Rittenhouse had effectively given him a clean slate. Seeing Denise and Connor acting like Flynn had been one of the white hats all along, and the others buying into it: Jiya starting to warm up to him and laugh at his snarky-ass jokes, and Lucy--the two of them had always had this weird thing, Lucy actually stepping in front of Wyatt’s shot in 1954 and acting like Flynn was this wounded lamb who only needed someone to be kind, and that must be Flynn doing some kind of weird manipulative magnetism to her. Fucking sociopath. If he hurt Lucy, Wyatt frankly didn’t give a shit whether they supposedly _needed_ him or not. They’d gotten by just fine without him before. Maybe he was useful occasionally, but Wyatt still didn’t trust him as far as he could throw the man. Especially after with as trigger-happy as he’d tried to be with Jessica. They’d worked together as a smooth effortless team for approximately thirty seconds before the bastard shot Jessica. Wyatt would grant that Flynn wasn’t bad enough with a gun to have only winged his target, especially when Jessica was presenting a broad, wide open shot, but the fact that he’d so coolly clipped her felt like it was a _fuck you_ to Wyatt. 

Mostly...there was the gut-wrenching sense that something had flipped, and now it was Flynn who was becoming their soldier, their friend, their rock, and now he was the one they eyed with suspicion and would grudgingly tolerate. And everything in him wanted to protest that he’d screwed up, but he wasn’t a Goddamn _terrorist who shot Lincoln_ , and feeling a bit like they’d backstabbed him too by so easily throwing him away. He hadn’t meant it. He’d have died to protect Rufus. It was a mistake. They had to know that, didn’t they?

He could fix a car engine practically blindfolded, could field-strip and re-assemble a rifle without thinking about it, could defuse a bomb. But he couldn’t fix his marriage, and he couldn’t fix this, and he couldn’t rage and demand they have it out, because he knew full well he’d lost that right. It had showed on the Zenger mission when he’d seen how Lucy and Jiya instinctively turned to Flynn that the trust was gone. They had to know he didn’t mean it, so until they maybe decided to take him back, he did the best thing he could do and kept away. Went for a lot of walks in the woods near the farmhouse. Took the car and walked the miles and miles of the Gettysburg battlefield because plenty of men had come here and never come home again, either literally or in spirit. Standing there on green grass looking over the peace and quiet that had managed to come from a place that had once been hell on earth, he wondered if he’d ever feel that kind of serenity again, or if he ever had.

Of course, now that June was turning to July, he couldn’t even have that because Gettysburg became an annual circus for the commemoration of the battle. Funny how he felt more kinship with the dead and surviving of a hundred fifty years ago than with his own supposed team right now, but they understood. Nobody ever came back. Not completely. He should have known better when it came to Jessica. But how could he have not _hoped_ , handed everything he’d longed for, the chance to make it all right again and undo one stupid mistake that night in San Diego that he’d never been able to forgive himself for committing?

Left waiting, once again, for _something_ to happen, though he wasn’t seventeen and in love and naive anymore. He couldn’t talk Jessica down and bring her back. But he couldn’t write her off either, couldn’t simply coldly turn her into an enemy and put a bullet in her head as a Rittenhouse operative. So here he existed in this limbo, and he wished like hell he could talk with Lucy about it, or Rufus, but obviously that wasn’t an option.

He’d gone for an hour-long walk out in the woods, startled by the booming in the distance, towards the town--either someone was starting the 4th celebrations early, or there was an re-enactment going on. It scraped his nerves raw. He halfway wished that Rittenhouse would jump and there would be a mission because if he was going to hear guns, he’d as soon it be actual combat rather than some pretend bullshit. He’d never been able to stand fireworks either. Too many explosions, too many ambushes, while overseas. Every time the Davises next door bought a pack of Black Cats or whatever in the Wal-Mart parking lot, buy three get two free special, and set them off in their backyard, some part of him wanted to go punch Rod Davis’ too-white teeth in. He’d yelled over the fence once, _You think setting off a few explosions and grilling some brats is you showing some patriotism, buddy? You and your fancy Lexus, what the hell do you do for America? Try fighting for your country. Try speaking up for it. Trying bleeding for it. Try **dying** for it._ Jessica had baked a pineapple upside down cake, gone to take it to Theresa Davis, smoothed the whole thing over. Of course she had. Made apologies for him, but he never was convinced he’d somehow been wrong to say it.

He’d give Flynn that at least he’d put his money where his mouth was and fight. Psychotic asshole terrorist, yes. Hypocrite, no. Backstabber--well, that remained to be seen. He wasn’t exactly betting the farm on Flynn’s continued good behavior, especially since it was Rittenhouse that had given him a clean record. Oh yeah, that didn’t seem suspicious _at all_ , and yet the people that had been dragging the hell out of him about Jessica totally accepted Flynn’s new innocence at face value.

Glancing at his watch, seeing it was quarter to two already, he turned back on the path and headed towards the barn. They’d all pushed themselves with late nights, early mornings, and generally working on it constantly from having not damn well much else to do. Over the last three weeks since the Zenger mission, that meant they’d replaced a good deal of the parts already, and as if by some unspoken accord, the Lifeboat was never idle. It was the one place he felt like he was still part of the team, effortless and easy, because as a mechanic, he was damn good at the labor involved. Maybe it’d help him prove to them that he was still all in, that he wanted to fix what had happened in Chinatown as much as anyone. And at two PM every day, they all stopped what they were doing and did a hard four hour push together, all six of them working in a single united purpose, until dinnertime. 

Connor and Denise stood outside the barn door, Connor hanging up his cell phone. From the scrape on Connor’s right knuckles, and a smear of grease on Denise’s left forearm, they’d been pitching in also on the project. “Another delivery due in tomorrow,” he said, a pleased smile coming over his features. “Finally got the copper wire for the conductive coiling. I ordered extra for the Lifeline, when we get there.”

“Who’s this one coming through?” Denise asked. He’d heard them discussing the need to reroute through trusted federal agents so Rittenhouse wouldn’t be able to track a sudden shitload of suspiciously tech-heavy deliveries being made directly to a certain Gettysburg farmhouse. It caused delays, but better safe than sorry. 

“I routed this one through Terlingua, Garcia’s NSA chum down in Baltimore. Next one goes through Kivlin at the FBI.” _Garcia_. Still sounded super weird, especially hearing Connor using it so casually.

“Good, good.” Denise looked at him. “You do need to get more rest, Connor.” She sighed, brushing her sweaty hair back from her forehead. “We all do.”

Connor saw him coming, and nodded. Maybe he was the only one who didn’t treat Wyatt much differently, but then, Connor knew a thing or two about screwing up and having to build his way back up from the bottom. “Impeccable timing, Wyatt. We’re about to get into the flux resistors--all hands on deck means we’ll be able to swap...ah….two of the twelve, perhaps? Still have her booted up again by dinner.” That was part of the protocol: the Lifeboat never went more than four hours offline before reconnecting everything enough to boot up and check the jump log, to keep the Rittenhouse monitoring more or less intact. Which was another thing that made the project go slower, but it was how it was.

“Of course.” Knowing the barn was more or less an oven, he headed into the kitchen of the farmhouse, filled up all the aluminum water bottles sitting on the drying rack, and slung them into a bag to bring them out to the barn. They were all guzzling water constantly these days, losing weight and pushing hard. 

Inside the barn, golden shafts of early afternoon sunlight peeked through the narrow gaps between old boards, casting alternate light and shadow on the walls. The faint scent of decades of hay and machine oil and horseshit clung to it despite the high tech now taking place there. The work lights were blazing as ever back by the Lifeboat, and back in the corner where they kept the mats and the heavy bag, Flynn and Lucy were busy at work. Flynn with target pads on his hands, holding them up and calling the punches: “One, three, six--no standing there flat footed, Lucy, I told you, you stay light on your feet,” casually throwing what Wyatt could tell was a deliberately lazy, slow right hook at her to force her to react and dodge, “guard stays _up_ as you evade, four, three…”

Another of those abrupt things between those two: suddenly Flynn was training her to fight, to shoot, and he’d been the one to protect her since that very first mission. The same mission where the man she now apparently trusted with those things had been using her as a human shield while Wyatt tried to save her--or shoot her if need be if that was the collateral damage needed to take Flynn down, but those were his orders, not exactly his preference.

She hadn’t asked him to teach her, despite all the times she must have seen he knew what he was doing. Instead, she’d asked Flynn, her apparent secret conversation buddy. He didn’t believe that Flynn hadn’t slept with her. Maybe not when he’d called her out on that late-night excursion to Flynn’s room and tried to warn her she was making a huge mistake, but somewhere since then, it must have happened. That thing between those two--it felt too tight, too intimate, for them to be only swapping stories about--what? Seriously, what the hell would an Eastern European terrorist-slash-psycho-assassin-slash-spy and a nerdy sweet West Coast academic have had to talk about for hours and hours, night after night? Old movies? Training Icelandic ponies? Pokemon Go? No, they had to be fucking. Though how the hell Garcia Flynn’s total lack of charm ever managed to seduce _anyone_ was beyond Wyatt’s comprehension. He suspected a lot of alcohol had been involved.

And the thought of how trusting Lucy was, the idea of Flynn seducing her, her looking at him with that giddy excitement in her eyes that he remembered so well, and how brokenhearted she’d be when that Slavic weasel finally turned on them, made him see red. He’d never intended to hurt Lucy. Jessica had been a surprise sprung on him. He couldn’t have done otherwise, and it was better that Lucy hadn’t made his life hell about it and had been so understanding. But still. Some part of him resented that Lucy had so easily stepped back to being _oh we’re just the best of friends_ and told him to go be a good husband to Jessica as if nothing they’d had mattered. Like that night they shared was some silly one-off. Like he’d never been worth fighting for in her eyes. 

It all felt like a kick in the nuts. Who was this Lucy standing there? Sweat-soaked ponytail lashing her neck as she punched and eluded and danced aside, with a grim look of determination on her face, giving punches that any self respecting Delta should still laugh at but even he could tell her form was better, crisper, than it had been. It was like she’d gone and become someone else he barely knew. The shy, bumbling historian he’d guarded, cared for, laughed with, slept with only months ago...that Lucy had left the building, and he had no idea where she’d gone. 

“It’s two o’clock, you two,” Connor called to them, pulling off his pearl grey button-down shirt and hanging it on a bent nail on one of the barn’s support columns, leaving himself in only his undershirt. Jiya was already underneath the Lifeboat, working on one of the hatches, already impatient to get on the afternoon’s work.

Lucy and Flynn quit at that, and Wyatt saw the slight smile and nod of approval he gave to her, and it irked him even more. “Go get a drink first before we get to work,” Flynn advised, waving a hand in the general direction of the Lifeboat.

He offered her the bag of water bottles, and she took one. “Thanks, Wyatt, I definitely needed this,” looking up at his face, meeting his eyes, and there was the Lucy he knew again, soft smile and kind eyes. Though in that moment he realized wryly that he’d effectively made himself Flynn’s waterboy too, and it felt petty to be annoyed, given he’d been in the desert long enough to know that dehydration sucked ass, and he wouldn’t wish it on anyone. Lucy must have sensed it and avoided that tension, because she grabbed another bottle from the bag, half-turned, and pitched it to Flynn with a casual underhand throw. “Here, Garcia, you need a drink too.”

It was one thing hearing Connor or Denise use that name, because at least they had known some apparently better Flynn. But Lucy--something short-circuited in his brain. Sent his mind down corridors towards doors he didn’t want to open--thoughts of Lucy crying out that name in pleasure. “He’s _Garcia_ now, huh?”

Flynn glanced at him, eyes dark in the dim light outside the bright spotlights of the work area, coolly expressionless. “It’s my name. Do you have an issue with me being called by my name...Logan?”

Lucy sighed, sounding almost disappointed. “He’s worked hard with us, Wyatt. Been a member of this team--”

“He’s been one of us all along, yeah, yeah, I heard.” Out of the corner of his eye he saw Jiya pause what she was doing and pop her head out from under the Lifeboat. “Guess that erases everything. Got it.”

“Wyatt…”

It felt like a relief to finally say something, and he felt like a kid who couldn’t keep mashing the same button until it got the reaction it needed. “I’m sorry, did we all miss that it was Rittenhouse gave him a clean record? You were all quick to dogpile me about Jessica, but it’s just _totally cool and not at all suspicious_ that Rittenhouse makes it he’s suddenly a bonafide American--Amerocroatian, whatever--hero? You think that’s not meant to make us trust him and let down our guard again?”

Flynn’s eyes went even darker, but he didn’t raise his voice, didn’t lunge for Wyatt. _Fight me, dammit._ “If you think for one second I’m in league with Rittenhouse after what they’ve done--”

“I dunno, _Garcia_ , maybe this whole ‘avenge my slaughtered family and then worm my way into the resistance’ thing really is you playing one hell of a long con.”

“If that’s the case,” Jiya said, leaning now on the Lifeboat stairs, “why is his wife with someone else and his kid’s still dead?”

“If he’s really a Rittenhouse mole, you think he didn’t kill his family himself? Maybe he didn’t care. Maybe he cared and he sacrificed them because Rittenhouse promised to bring them back, and he won’t hesitate to go back and kill his wife’s new hubby and their four cute little kiddies once that act is done convincing us he’s--”

Now Flynn’s expression was turning actively murderous. “ _Odjebi_ , you…” 

“And Lucy, you saw how his mission to take down Emma in 1919 suddenly ended up with him talking Rufus into the three of them being best buddies--”

“It’s such a shame that Rufus isn’t here right now to tell us why he decided to also temporarily cooperate with a woman I intend to kill first chance I get, isn’t it?” Flynn shot back.

Denise spoke up. “ _Enough_ , Wyatt. Garcia. I trust you both.”

The more he got into the idea, the more sense it made. “You trust the Flynn you knew, Denise. I get that. But the Jessica in another timeline didn’t have shit to do with Rittenhouse either.” He threw up his hands. “I mean...who the hell can we trust after Rittenhouse has meddled around in their life?” It came out sounding more plaintive than exasperated as he intended. _If I can’t trust my own wife…_

“Do you trust me?” Lucy said, stepping between him and Flynn. “Because Rittenhouse has sure meddled in my life.”

She didn’t get it. Couldn’t believe that Flynn was dangerous still, and her belief in the best in everyone was beautiful but it sort of drove him crazy too. “That’s different. They didn’t give you back something you wanted. They only took things from you.”

Flynn sighed, wiping the sweat off his face with the back of his forearm, then looked at Wyatt, eyes burning intensely but expression oddly calm again. “You know, if you actually care about her, then stop putting her in the middle of this,” gesturing emphatically between himself and Wyatt, “and respect her choices, because she doesn’t need your damn permission, and she doesn’t deserve your damn guilt trips disguised as concern either.”

“Oh, cut the crap with playing white knight.”

“I mean, do you have _any_ idea how insulting it is that you expect her to be so grateful that she’s still good enough for you to lurch at her as a fallback option?”

 _There_. He’d left an opening, and Wyatt took it. “Like she’s not yours? Like you’re anywhere near good enough for her?”

Flynn snorted derisively, looking down that long nose of his at Wyatt. “Of course I’m not. But while we’re on the subject, how about you actually decide for well and good whether you’re going to commit to fighting for your wife and child? Because I’d say we all really need to know whether we’re supposed to help you save her or kill her. It’s a little,” he wobbled a hand from side to side, “unclear right now.”

“Oh, just like you fought for yours? Seems like you gave both your wife and kid up in a big hurry when apparently Rittenhouse opened the door to another opportunity for you to let them go without being the bad guy.” Presumably so he could do more than stare at Lucy like a sad puppy. He knew the rest of them were listening, Lucy was listening, but he couldn’t seem to help himself.

“Please. We’ve all seen you sulking for the last seven weeks. I don’t blame you. Your wife chose _Rittenhouse_ because they’ve been more of a family than the man she married. The man who fathered her child.” Flynn stepped closer, lanky bastard using that height to crowd Wyatt’s space. "And you can't decide whether you can kill her or not, because you still love her and you can't let her go, but you're terrified you can't win her back, aren't you?"

Oh God, oh God, he couldn’t breathe, the panic tightening within his chest at the memory of it, and Flynn just wouldn’t _shut the fuck up_ and he lashed out, fist flying before he could even think about it, needing to shut the man up, get that mouth to stop talking.

Flynn took the punch almost casually, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, saw the bright smear of blood there, and flicked his gaze back to Wyatt. “You poor broken bastard,” and his tone was oddly soft, almost pitying. “That’s the only language you know how to use, isn’t it?”

That pitying contempt hurt more than him hitting back would have, somehow. The red raging anger fled, as it always did, and regret took its place. “Lucy…” He looked over at her, willing her to understand somehow. But somehow he felt like she’d slipped even further away, and it terrified him even more. “I didn’t mean…”

“Yeah, they never mean it, except they don’t not mean it enough to actually do anything about it,” Flynn said dryly. The man hadn’t raised a fist, or even significantly raised his voice, but somehow Wyatt felt the bruises and blows deep in his soul anyway.

Then the alarm rang to say Rittenhouse had jumped, and shit, wasn’t that a welcome relief, as he could sense the release of tension in the room almost like someone had opened a steam valve. “Guess we’re not getting work on the Lifeboat done this afternoon,” Connor said, racing for the console.

“When and where?” he asked Connor. Good--a mission. Another chance to try to apologize and show that they could trust him, that he would protect them. That it had been one mistake that he regretted with all his soul and he’d never stop until they got Rufus back. To prove that what had happened just now meant nothing.

“Philadelphia, February 22, 1861,” Connor reported. Automatically their eyes all went to Lucy, waiting for her to play history detective and figure it out.

Though Flynn actually laughed, and Jiya eyed him like he was demented. “What’s so funny?”

“Didn’t think Rittenhouse was funny,” Wyatt muttered.

“Hey, could be that our clothes problem is solved for once,” Flynn replied. “We’ve got how many 1860’s era re-enactors camped out five miles from here this week, complete with absolutely obsessive attention to accurate period detail in their clothes?”

Lucy raised an eyebrow. “Are you actually suggesting we go knock out some re-enactors, Garcia?”

“I was aiming more for, ah, ‘borrowing’ from their cars or tents while their back is turned, but…” Flynn made a _I mean, why not?_ sort of shrug. 

More re-enactors. His wisecrack about those soldiers’ uniforms smelling like loneliness still stood, as far as he was concerned. “If you get arrested here for stealing someone’s clothes, that causes problems for us all,” Denise replied sharply. 

“We’ve almost gotten arrested more than once in the past for trying to steal clothes,” Lucy pointed out. “And the risk of typhus in jails pre-1900 really isn’t fun.” 

Denise sighed. “Fair. All right, fine, I’ll go to the Parks Service and requisition something from their reproductions staff. It should only take about an hour.” How exactly Denise proposed to requisition period-reproduction clothing in the name of the federal government without there being a lot of questions asked and forms to fill out, Wyatt wasn’t absolutely sure, but chances were DHS could get things done. “Lucy, you come with to make sure we’re getting what you need.”

“I’ll come with you too,” Flynn said, giving Denise that smirking grin of his. “Two of us flashing federal badges at them can’t hurt. Multi-agency initiative and all.” Of course he wanted to go with Lucy. Of course.

“Maybe we should all go with,” he said in a hurry.

“Five people crammed in a Civic?” Jiya jerked a thumb at Flynn. “Especially this one with as tall as he is?” 

“Just means I get shotgun by default,” Flynn said breezily.

“I’m going to go timetrance,” Jiya said. “See if I can get some information that way.” Not a bad idea--between Lucy's history cred and Jiya's trances, it had made the Zenger mission a hell of a lot easier. 

“I’ve decided. You’re sitting this one out, Wyatt,” Denise told him, looking at him with that stern boss face. 

“Wait, what?” Flynn dragged Wyatt’s pain out for everyone to see, and _Wyatt_ was the one getting punished?

Denise nodded towards Connor, still over at the control panel. “Connor, do you want to go?”

“Being a black man in 1861 too close to the Mason-Dixon line? No thank you.” Connor grimaced a little, then gave up the attempt at humor. “I realize Rufus would have gone, but he would have been needed as a pilot. And me, I don’t have Wyatt’s military talents, Jiya’s a perfectly good pilot and engineer, and...this history isn’t my forte, shall we say, so I’m not certain what I would add to this one. Better I should stay here and keep getting the parts arriving on time, and be support here in case of...any issues.” 

Denise passed close to him, reaching out to put a hand on his shoulder. She lowered her voice. “I know it's not what you wanted, but believe me, I'm doing this for you. Your head’s not in the right place, Wyatt. So you’re taking this mission off.” She looked at him, and the concern on her face was almost harder to bear than condemnation would have been. So it looked like he’d failed her too. She’d specifically recruited him, and he’d seen her angry, but this soft concern spoke more about her disappointment than reprimands ever could. "You can talk to me," she coaxed. 

It felt like nothing could ever be good again, and he couldn’t bear up under it anymore, because there was no clear mission, no clear answers. Maybe he didn’t want to go. Maybe he didn’t want to watch Lucy choose to work with Flynn yet again. Most of all, maybe he didn’t want to risk seeing Jessica if she was there, because Flynn was right--he still didn’t know whether he wanted to save her or kill her. Drained, exhausted, tired of everything right then and wanting to do nothing more than give up, he headed for the workbench, unwilling to let them accuse him of doing nothing useful. “Fine. Connor and I will keep up the work on constructing new flux whatevers from this end.”


	6. 3x02: Midnight Train to Baltimore (Jiya: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, February 1861)

Jiya sat cross-legged, back braced against the gnarled old tree trunk, hands resting loosely on her thighs. Eyes closed, seeing the last sunspots dancing behind her closed eyelids like dust motes. Somehow she felt like there should be something profound about this, some weird _do you see the threads of the universe?_ moment of realization, but that wasn’t the case. The visions didn’t seize--literally and figuratively--her as they had before. She’d gotten that control of them. And she’d learned to hone in on the visions, razor sharp and sure, when she knew exactly what she was looking for, like Rufus, the coast, and some yellow-toothed goons with spurs. When she had something personal to seek, that helped a lot. There was too much temptation in that, though. She could have dwelt too much on Rufus, on her parents before her dad’s slow decline and death and her mom’s return to Lebanon. Lost herself in the light and love of those bright moments of her life, never wanting to come back to the harsher reality. 

She could have easily ended up like Stanley, walking far more in the past with Napoleon and Sacajawea than living here and now. Seeing that he’d willingly lost himself that much to history had terrified her then, and it honestly did still. Plus in the 1880’s, losing herself in a trance would have gotten her committed to somewhere and locked away, maybe shipped up to Stockton to the lunatic asylum--no, _mental hospital_ \--there.

A date and place wasn’t personal. The visions weren’t exactly like Wikipedia: plug in a date and get a clear answer spit out. _Oh yes, you’re looking for this person at this spot at this exact time._ On the Zenger mission she’d managed a brief trance and seen the Plume and Scepter tavern, a brawl, a man with an ink-stained waistcoat and fingers. Truth was, she’d had no idea whether that brawl was something important, or just liquored-up men with more anger and testosterone than sense, when nights like that had been a dime a dozen at the Bison Horn. Maybe someone was pissed that the printer had made a typo in their ad. Maybe the printer hadn’t paid his tavern bill. Maybe the printer himself was starting a riot because the beer sucked. But now the whole team acted like she’d pointed them directly to John Peter Zenger as unerringly as a compass, like she’d figured out the whole thing somehow rather than it being Lucy to connect the dots and recognize _oh yeah, future First Amendment in danger here_. 

Wryly, she hoped Emma wasn’t working her way through the Constitutional amendments one by one. She had a lot less enthusiasm about the Second, or at least how people took it to mean, than the First.

February 22, 1861. Philadelphia. Back then it was a city of, what, like half a million people? A huge teeming metropolis for the mid-nineteenth century, bigger than San Francisco twenty-five years later, and any one of those people could be the hook here. She breathed in deeply, tried to focus and center herself, sent a quick prayer. Her parents had been more secular Shiites to begin, and their daughter, American-raised and a scientist, had wandered even further away from daily expression of faith. But she’d seen, the last few years especially, that there were still mysteries beyond the black and white explanations of science, that faith could be a useful tool in the toolbox, even if maybe not the whole cornerstone of the thing. So she figured that it still never hurt to ask Allah. She’d be praying like crazy when they finally finished the Lifeline and went back to Chinatown. That was for damn sure.

Night, soaring above the city, gaslight and candles below in thousands of pinpoint stars. Flying above the sooty chimneys belching smoke, coasting and then diving in suddenly, through narrow alleyways and along streets, chasing the pull of _something_ down below, zooming in like a raptor stooping on prey. “Falcon vision”, she’d dubbed it, tongue-in-cheek, though she sort of wished like the Eagle Vision from Assassin’s Creed that it would actually color code things for her. _Just light up Rittenhouse’s actual target in gold for me, please, and paint up any Rittengoons in red and potential allies in blue while you’re at it? Thanks._ No such luck, of course.

Diving in at the train station and alighting for a moment, like perching and watching the scene unfolding, colors and shapes swirling like smoke. A glimpse of a tall man, stooped over with pain or age, muffled up tightly against the winter chill with a plaid shawl and with a soft felt hat pulled low, and a woman smiling at him, calling him _brother_ , reaching out an arm to gently help him up into the train car, an ordinary sleeper car. Then it all turned to a dizzying spiral and another string yanked at her somewhere else in the city, but then there was another string pulling besides that, even more urgent. Shaking her head, frustrated, she chased the stronger pull, and before long she was far beyond the city limits, heading--south, it must be south? Following what must be that same train, far below, steadily chugging away through the quiet dark countryside, headed south.

She opened her eyes, saw Lucy there with a bundle of cloth in her hands. “Here.” Mentally groaned looking at the clothing in Lucy’s hands--the 1860’s were even worse than the 1880s for volume of fabric--crinolines, no less--and July in the greater Chesapeake was different from San Francisco besides. Plus dressing for February weather would really suck until they got in the Lifeboat. She went to change in the downstairs bathroom, slinging the pine-green jacket over her arm. Pulled her hair back in a casual chignon since that would do. She wouldn’t be playing a high society lady with a maid to do her hair for her, after all.

“What did you see?” Lucy asked, handing Jiya a water bottle. She gratefully took a few swigs of it, noticing Lucy had left the first few buttons of her shirtwaist undone. But then, Lucy hadn’t lived through three summers in Victorian period garb as normal. Though admittedly she’d enjoyed her Bison Horn attire sometimes if for no other reason than its being sleeveless.

“I don’t know that it’s actually in Philly,” she said, frowning, wiping the sweat off her forehead from the humidity. “But I ended up following a train southbound.”

“Can I vote that it _not_ be Baltimore?” Flynn said crossly, heading for the front porch, already half-dressed himself in dark trousers and white shirt, braces hanging down around his hips. 

Lucy half-shrugged. “I know it hasn’t been your favorite city of late, but we go where we go, Garcia. You know that.”

He paused on the stairs, hand on the whitewashed support column of the porch, and smiled at Lucy, eyes crinkling at the corners. “Are you asking me if ‘whither thou goest’ applies, Lucy?” Lucy gave him an abashed-looking smile. Whatever allusion that was--Shakespeare, maybe? Jiya wasn’t sure. Then his expression turned more serious, as he turned, leaned against the column, and looked at the two of them intently. “What intel do you two have? We’re down Wyatt and I’m still not fully healed up,” an awkward half-shrug, “so I’d rather take the time to compile notes beforehand. Not that guns blazing can’t be useful, but that’s better done with two of us.”

“A train headed south,” Jiya answered him, sitting down on the top stair of the porch. “There was a man who got on that train, late at night, all bundled up. Sick, or old? He didn’t look well. All hunched over. A woman helped him into the car--looked like she was his sister. I couldn’t see his face, and nobody said his name or anything.”

Lucy thoughtfully chewed her lower lip at that. “Prominent Philadelphians in 1861. An invalid….well, George McClellan was prone to recurring bouts of malaria, but he was out in Ohio then as president of the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad.” 

“Maybe it’s nothing. It was late, and the two of them were getting into an ordinary sleeper car. Not exactly what you’d expect of someone prominent.” Jiya shrugged, frustrated. Why was she given these stupid visions if she couldn’t change anything, and it couldn’t help with the missions to boot? “It all looked pretty mundane, being honest. Maybe it’s someone who matters only ten or twenty years later? That’s gonna be pretty hard to nail down.”

“Then we’d better get to Philadelphia. Whoever it is,” Flynn said, “Rittenhouse will probably take this as a perfect opportunity. A sick man, guarded only by his sister? Wait until the train’s beyond the city limits, either kill or kidnap them, depending what they’re looking for here, then hop off the train and vanish. Nobody’s the wiser.“ He shrugged. “Or, you know, go ahead and plant a bomb on that train car. Really depends whether Rittenhouse wants a precision hit or to create drama with wide ripples.” He gave a snort of dry amusement. “Carol, we’d know to expect a surgical strike. Emma? I think she can do either. Unfortunately for us.” No hint of how much he probably wanted to kill Emma, given the gauntlet she’d put him through recently. No hint on Lucy’s face either of conflicted emotions about losing her mother. Good. They were all able to lock it down and keep going, despite how much it hurt. 

She couldn’t help the pang of guilt and worry about Wyatt, though. He’d been out of line, no question, flying off the handle like that. Flynn--though it felt odd for her to still be calling him _Flynn_ now too, given Denise and Connor had crossed that line without even knowing, and Lucy had obviously made the conscious decision. It felt odd for her and Wyatt to be the only two not doing so. Besides, she and the Croatian sass machine had been watching movies and shows their loved ones had loved, eaten junk food too, talked a bit about grief. He’d almost died to bring her back from Chinatown. She still wasn’t fully comfortable around him, but that was his sheer lingering unfamiliarity, and the way she sensed he kept himself aloof except in moments he felt safe with someone to open up, rather than mistrust or fear. Objectively, it felt weird to insist at this point he wasn’t a part of this, and keep him firmly shut outside of the group by using his last name only. But when she deliberately tried to think of him as _Garcia_ there was some odd hitch to it that she couldn’t fully put her finger on quite yet. Some lingering hesitation that had nothing to do with Wyatt’s vehement insistence on hating him, and she wished she could put a name to it so she could simply deal with it already, because complicated was something she didn’t need right now. 

It wasn’t the feeling like he’d cheated. She’d seen her share of cheats at the card table, and he was almost painfully careful to make it clear he didn’t assume some timeline fluke meant everything was fine and dandy. Besides, Jiya didn’t ascribe the same weight to that fact that some did. So Emma created this timeline where he’d been there from the start. Fine. There was probably some timeline out there where Jiya herself was some crazy Rittenhouse assassin. All that meant was any of them were probably capable of anything, in certain circumstances. But he’d earned her respect here. He’d screwed up, but he’d admitted that, put himself at their mercy, and done his best to make up for it. Which was still more than Wyatt could do. He was her friend, but she also felt exhausted sometimes with his insistence that Flynn was somehow worse than him, like that somehow made everything he did OK in retrospect. _I’m not as bad as someone else_ wasn’t exactly an apology. And he’d flown off the handle, tried to throw Flynn under the bus by insisting he was Rittenhouse all along, tried to start a fight, and just looked even worse by it. She worried, yes, because for Wyatt to spin out that badly wasn’t good. But she had to admit that Denise was in the right to bench him for this one. She’d miss him on this mission, yes, but she only hoped her friend would come back to them, and that having Jessica turn on him wasn’t more than he could bear. She’d be there for her where she could, but she couldn’t simply let him off the hook because he was hurting. They all were hurting, and Wyatt had directly helped cause that by not thinking of anyone’s needs except his own. 

Pacing back and forth past the porch steps, Lucy spun suddenly, the ruffles on her deep crimson skirt creating an impressive rippling echo thanks to the crinoline, hands out wide in a gesture of excitement. “Oh my God. I’ve got it. It’s Lincoln.”

Flynn made a strangled sort of noise, eyes downcast, tugging at his still-unbuttoned shirt collar. “Uh, can I vote that it _not_ be Abraham Lincoln?” 

Lucy raised an eyebrow at him. “Why, are you suddenly planning to assassinate him again?”

“No! _Jebote_. Of course not. But Wyatt will love this,” Flynn shot back. “I get a chance to save Lincoln this time, that feeds into his paranoid fantasy of me being Emma’s Rittenhouse mole perfectly, doesn’t it?” 

“Garcia,” Lucy said, in a no-nonsense crisp schoolteacher tone.

“Lucy,” he returned it measure for measure, staring her down.

Jiya had the sense she’d better break whatever moment the two of them were having with some good practical plain talk, because Lucy would likely be too soft. “So, look, here’s the deal,“ not using _Garcia_ but still hesitating to use _Flynn_ either, and _hey you_ really wouldn’t cut it, “Lucy and I are in stupidly impractical dresses to begin,” Jiya flicked her fingers against the wide crinolined skirt, “and we also can’t fight like you can. And Wyatt’s made himself unavailable besides. Yes, you’ve had a rough few weeks. Yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised if Emma figured there might be a nice bonus of messing with your oh-so-Catholic sense of guilt on this. But we need you on this mission because otherwise Rittenhouse waltzes in unopposed. So are you in or not?”

He gave her a half-nod, and a slight twitch at the corner of his mouth that might have been a smile or a thanks. “I’m in. Of course.”

“Call it God giving you a pretty clear sign that here’s a chance to make up for 1865?” Lucy told him. 

Jiya could almost have smacked her for that. _Hey, no pressure._ She stared up at him, still standing there. “Also, can you please stop looming over us like that?” He laughed at that, stepping down to the bottom of the stairs, most of the air of agitation evaporated off. 

Flynn gestured to her. “All right, unleash the history geek. Briefing’s yours, Lucy. But for God’s sake, let’s brief on the move and get this thing going before we all melt.”

Lucy nodded at that, already moving to briskly do up the buttons of her shirtwaist that she’d left unbuttoned in the heat. “OK, so long story short. President Lincoln’s election is not well received by Southerners--’

“We’re not college freshmen,” Jiya interrupted, opening the barn door. “You can skip ahead some.”

“Cliff’s Notes is it. Maryland never secedes, in part because of quick Federal occupation to keep DC from being surrounded. Baltimore is still largely Southern in sympathies, though--even Booth was from Baltimore. And Lincoln’s train on the inaugural tour was due to pass through Baltimore on its way to DC. But the train line wasn’t continuous yet, so there was a plan for Lincoln to arrive in the afternoon of Saturday, the 23rd, and he’d have to take a carriage about a mile between Calvert and Camden stations.”

Flynn, strapping on his holster, gave another of those snarky snorts of amusement. “As anyone from the Balkans could tell you, being a prominent figure riding extensive distances in an open carriage where anyone with a grudge can shoot or bomb you is generally considered an idiotic idea.”

“Even JFK found that one out,” Jiya pointed out, remembering the awkward teenager all too well, and how Rufus had wanted so badly to save him from his fate. Dallas, Austin--didn’t matter in the end, did it? As they reached the Lifeboat, Wyatt shoved the stairs into place, avoiding eye contact, gesturing for them to get going. She sensed Lucy pause for a moment, but then decide not to say anything, and to focus on the mission. “So you’re saying there’s a plot to kill Lincoln in 1861.”

“Right, and Samuel Morse Felton, president of the Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore Railroad heard the rumbles that something might happen in Baltimore, and he went to Alan Pinkerton about it. Sent agents to cozy up to Southern sympathizers, including a potential ringleader, a barber named Cypriano Ferrandini--”

“Let’s see: he’s a foreigner,” Flynn began to list traits off on his fingers, “Italian, Catholic, pro-secession, would-be assassin--I mean, is this man even real? It’s like he’s the perfect villain from a penny dreadful.” 

“Dramatic mustache included, I assume,” Jiya added, sliding into the pilot’s seat and sighing at the damn crinoline refusing to play nicely with the cramped quarters , and attempting to turn into a tortured accordion. “Sorry, F--pal, you’re gonna have to squish in around two crinolines. Just shove ‘em aside if you need.”

“It’s fine,” he said dismissively, as Jiya started to program the jump. 

Lucy resumed her intel. “Ferrandini’s maybe a little too perfect a scapegoat, yes, because nothing was ever proved against him. But there was enough concern generally that Pinkerton took it very seriously, including sending his first female agent, Kate Warne, to go undercover. Enough that they redid Lincoln’s train route. He went from Harrisburg to Philadelphia the evening of the 22nd, and then they sneaked him onto an ordinary passenger train for Baltimore that would pass through in the middle of the night. No fanfare. He dressed in disguise, and Kate Warne kept watch over him pretending to be his sister.”

“Looks like we’ve got our target, then.” Jump programmed, she turned back to the two of them. “So--what are we looking for?”

Flynn sighed, rubbed a hand across his face tiredly. “I’d guess Emma will want to make a splash. She’s going big by going after Lincoln anyway--he dies now, presumably the Civil War doesn’t break out.”

“Good thing you didn’t have that idea in 2016,” Jiya muttered. She couldn’t help it. Though she made herself step back mentally from the conversation and redo the calculations. She didn’t have even Rufus’ level of training as a pilot, and obviously being forced to improve on the job was a level of pressure she thrived under, but no time to get careless. Better to not splinch all three of them into gory bits scattered between 1861 and 2018 because she got too lazy to spare sixty seconds to double-check herself. Was that what happened with those creepy folklore stories of bits of meat raining down from the sky? Time travelers who screwed up?

“I didn’t see how preventing the Civil War would hurt Rittenhouse--felt more like it would help them. The journal was pointing more towards the instability of 1865 anyway.” She wasn’t looking, but Jiya could hear the sheepishness in his voice.

Lucy groaned, and Jiya imagined her covering her face with her hand. “Garcia, you know, sometimes you should do us and yourself a favor, and be a little less honest.”

“So, ah, bold moves. I wouldn’t be surprised if she went for a bomb. Emma…she’ll hide and strike from cover when she has to, but she’ll want to draw us out.” The double-check was finished, and she looked back over at them.

“What, pulling overly dramatic and very public moves to provoke a reaction from your enemy?” Lucy asked him dryly. “Does that sound like someone we know?”

He shot Lucy a look, but the wry half-smile on his face ruined it. “She made her big move in Chinatown and went for the coup. She knows we’re on to her as the danger, so she can’t manipulate from the shadows anymore. And me, I’d say she wants power. Craves the recognition and notoriety.” The unspoken _I never did_ hung there in the air. “She’ll go for something big. Bigger than quietly putting a bullet in Lincoln on a secret midnight train ride.”

“All right, so probably a bomb, or if she aims to shoot him, causing a big scene about it?”

“You any good at defusing bombs?” Jiya asked him, reaching to flip the jump switch. Especially one built by a skilled engineer like Emma--it wouldn’t be an easy thing with a couple sticks of dynamite slapped together with a crude timer, snip a couple of wires and call it a day.

The Lifeboat gave that initial lurching surge as it took off into the timestream, making Jiya’s stomach do a few backflips. As usual, she was glad she hadn’t eaten right before flying. “My expertise is more towards deactivating landmines,” he said dryly. “I don’t suppose bombs were in your MIT classes?”

“Carnegie Mellon, actually.” He tipped his head in acknowledgment of that. “But I think I can help figure it out.”

A few moments of silence fell, the Lifeboat sailed on towards its destination. Jiya noticed they were flying a bit smoother than on the Zenger mission--good. The repairs they’d made so far had been effective. But plenty of work to do yet, as they were still shaking like a badly balanced washing machine. She only prayed that ever single tiny piece of the Lifeboat, down to the slightest turn of wire, stayed intact until they got back and could keep at the work of replacement and repair. 

They must have been getting close, because the ride became smoother, the Lifeboat decelerating and landing with the usual solid _thump_. Opening the hatch, she breathed in the bitter February air with groan of relief. “Not gonna lie, this feels much better than the swamp air we’ve been living in.”

Flynn hopped out first, reaching up to help them with the annoying crinolines, setting Jiya down on the ground easily as if she weighed no more than a feather. “It’s eight PM. When does the train leave?” he asked Lucy, shrugging on his black winter greatcoat and clapping his homburg on his head.

“Eleven PM, supposedly, but Pinkerton’s men delay it a bit because Lincoln’s train from Harrisburg is late,” Lucy replied. She nodded towards the glow of gaslight in the distance. “We should likely be there within an hour.” 

“All right. Well, at least we get to skip the steps of stealing a car and some clothes on this one.” She hit the cloaking button, and the Lifeboat vanished. Rufus had muttered about needing that Mothership upgrade installed for sure when they came back from 1754 and Flynn’s goons had found and tried to destroy the Lifeboat. Definitely useful when they knew the mission would take them far away, or for a while. Easier than trying to bury it under brush and twigs. She stared at the local features, trying to triangulate as best she could and fix their position in her memory. Hearing Lucy mutter to herself about the stone wall of the farmhouse, and the crooked pine tree, Jiya knew she was doing the same. Hopefully they’d be back before too late in the morning when people might start poking around more.

It took them precisely an hour and fourteen minutes to walk to town and to get to the train station. She had the strange sense of comfort, and it took her a minute to place it. The sharper, crisper air, the stars above not washed out by electric lights. The rutted roads, the smell of mud and horseshit, the rumble of the occasional wagon heading homeward to a farm after dark. The familiar tread of heeled boots, the feel of a corset, the heavier weight of skirts, though the crinoline meant they didn’t brush her thighs and calves. Wearing a bonnet, even. This had been the life she’d adjusted to twenty-five years and thousands of miles away, a life one that felt worn-in and comfortable. In some ways that life still felt more real than the one she’d come back to, 2018 with its microwaves and sports bras and WiFi and reality TV.

And that life had been real too. She’d never stopped missing them, especially Rufus. But as 1885 turned to 1886 and beyond, she began to accept that reality. They’d called her Jiya there because foreign-sounding names weren’t unusual on the Chinatown border anyway, and “Jia” was a Chinese girl’s name anyway. 

_Fei looking at her shyly, practicing her English. “It’s lucky name, Jia. It means ‘good’. Or ‘pretty’. Or ‘home’. All good things, see?” Home. Maybe...this could be home too. Maybe she could have a good life here. Eventually._ She’d had friends--Sarah, Molly, Meixiu, Jeong--she’d been from northern Korea but of course everyone just called her “Chinese” anyway. She’d had plans. It hadn’t been the life she’d chosen, but it had been a good life, and now she couldn’t help but wonder what had been left in the wake of the shootout. Dead bodies, and her friends probably assuming she’d been kidnapped as a not-quite-white sexual slave. A gambler had told her once that she could make good money as a “fancy” in his parlor house in the Tenderloin in New York, so long as she hadn’t been having sex with any of the Asian men. _That don’t wash out, you see._ She’d actually enjoyed throwing him out, debated telling him that her husband--the only way to explain Rufus that they’d respect--had been black. Decided to not start yet another California race riot over it, and simply let George toss him face-first into the street gone all muddy and sticky from the spring rains.

The clerk asked, “Three tickets to Baltimore?”

“I did say three, yes,” Flynn confirmed politely. Doing the talking, because of course the feather-brained little women couldn’t be expected to do that with a man around, or handle money or anything. 

“Your wife and--her servant, I assume?” The way the man looked at her awkwardly, head tilted slightly aside. “She’ll require third class accommodation, then?” Jiya could have laughed. Yeah, that look of racial confusion was comfortably familiar too, as they saw how not-quite-white she was and hurried to make sense of her brown skin. Though out west in Frisco they were more likely to assume she was Mexican, or part Native American, than part black. But she’d still heard Southern drawls calling her _that high yaller gal_ more than once. Usually with an offer for other services than dealing poker, if they called her _comely_ or _pretty_. Someone Middle Eastern was utterly beyond the average American imagination at this point.

“Sir, this is,” Lucy said, putting a hand of Jiya’s shoulder, “my very dear friend Jeanette de Marigny, of New Orleans. Have you not heard her lectures on the spiritualist movement?” Freeborn New Orleans Creole--about as respectable as not-quite-white could get in this day and age.

“Can’t say that I have.”

“Yes, well, Baltimore is her next stop.” Flynn leaned an elbow on the ticket counter, using that imposing size and height against the man. “And my wife and I intend to accompany our friend.” Yeah, all right, made sense to claim one of them was married to him, and better Lucy than her. It invited fewer questions than a single woman trying to travel with a friend, or even a brother, annoyingly patriarchal as it was. 

She sensed with his own pointedly not-quite-American accent, Flynn was letting Lucy do the majority of the talking. Lucy leaned in herself, though Jiya had to imagine she was going with doe-eyed innocence rather than imposing glowering. “I’m certain it wouldn’t go over well with Mister Felton if it was known that Mademoiselle de Marigny was refused every due hospitality of the Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore.”

She strove for her best Levantine French accent, certain this man wouldn’t known New Orleans Creole if it smacked him in the face. “Mister Felton was such a lovely and hospitable gentlemen for our seance.” She heard the sound of someone halting horses behind them, and the screech of a train whistle as it headed off for its destination. The hot wind from the smokestack blew traces of soot into the air from the departing locomotive, settling on clothing and faces and hands and every available surface. The clerk sighed and wiped the wooden counter off with a rag, obviously well used to it. “So terrible, the loss of his child.” She felt rather than saw Flynn stiffen slightly at that, and suppressed a wince. But it hadn’t been meant to hurt. She’d seen in San Francisco--almost everyone living back then lost a spouse, a sibling, a child. Though that didn’t make the pain any less real.

Shaking off her skirts, she thought it was a good thing the Park Department had chosen dark fabrics for their reproductions. She remembered, only too late since she’d never taken a train in the 1880s, that people tended to dress in dark clothing for train journeys back in the days of coal power for that very reason.

“Very well. Three first class tickets for Baltimore, for Miss Juliette de Marigny, and Mister and Mrs.--”

“Gerald and Lucinda Flynn,” Flynn supplied coolly, from his ingratiating grin, obviously enjoying causing the man’s fragile WASP sensibilities even more consternation by inflicting the notion of the accursed and not-to-be-trusted Irish Catholics on him to boot. All this needed was someone Jewish, and it would turn into some politically incorrect nineteenth century “walked into a bar” joke.

“Flynn? That’s the damn oddest mick accent I’ve ever heard,” the agent muttered, thin blond mustache practically bristling now with offense he probably couldn’t quite define. 

“Darling,” Lucy said, tugging at Flynn’s arm, “when I consider it, hadn’t we better get sleeper berths tonight? It’s a long journey to Baltimore, and we want Julie to be well rested.” 

Flynn grinned at the agent. “You heard my better half, sir.” Jiya swore he threw an Irish accent on top of his faint natural Croatian, presumably to mess with the man even further. “Make it three sleeper berths.” 

“Towards the rear of the train, if you please, sir,” Lucy insisted. “We’d as soon be as far away from the smoke and noise of the locomotive as possible.”

“Of course, whatever my dearest Lucy requires.” Jiya wondered if Lucy stomped on his foot when nobody was looking.

The agent’s pinched look of annoyance intensified. “Three sleeper berths--”

“Actually, we’ll take four,” Jiya said, remembering they came in blocks. Better to not have a random friend with them for the trip, let alone a Rittenhouse assassin. “I’d as soon not endure strange company during the journey.” 

“Very. Well.” The man was gritting his teeth. “This appears to be a journey full of people with unusual requirements. I can assign you to the front half of the rear car. You have no baggage?”

“Oh, it was all sent on ahead,” she said, waving a hand airily, dismissively. “It’s easier to not have to fuss with baggage when one travels as extensively as I do.”

From the look he gave them as he counted out Flynn’s change, he wondered if the Flynns and Miss de Marigny were a _menage et trois_ , racial and ethnic degenerates as they apparently were, so why not through some so-called sexual depravity on top of it?. He also obviously wondered how a dear, sweet, innocent flower like Lucy had ended up with two people like them. Probably imagined her being kidnapped by a smooth-talking Irish bounder. Flynn was many things, but generally, “smooth talker” wasn’t chief among them.

Why not have some fun with him? “In such a harsh world, Gerry, Lucy, it’s so good of you both to look out for me as lovingly as you do,” she said brightly, giving the two of them her most dazzling come-hither smile, practically hearing the ticket agent choke at it.

Flynn and Lucy looked about ready to choke too, although in their case it was from laughter. “You always know that whatever we have is yours too, my dearest Julie,” Lucy said warmly, slipping an arm around Jiya’s waist, hustling all three of them away from the ticket counter before they lost it. Flynn reached out to snag the tickets and presumably give the ticket agent one last knowing smirk and wink.

They made it twenty feet away, Jiya trying to not drop her ridiculous little velvet reticule and just start howling in laughter. She hadn’t--had she had fun like that since….? “OK, OK,” Lucy said, though Jiya could hear her snickering, patting Jiya on the shoulder, “back on mission.”

“Aw, c’mon, Lucy, live a little. We can have fun and get the mission done too,” Flynn answered. “All right, so…” he gestured towards the train, tone all business again.

“Warne and her _brother_ should end up in the final car as he’ll come in at the last minute.” Lucy lowered her voice and moved a little closer to Jiya, two women whispering secrets to each other, escorted by their towering husband/friend/lover/whatever. The wide skirts at least had the effect of necessarily chasing people into a zone a couple feet out, so they were perfect for avoiding eavesdropping. “Along with Pinkerton himself, and Ward Lamon, Lincoln’s friend and bodyguard. She’ll have told the right people that her brother needs total privacy at the back of the train due to his condition. Blinds closed, the whole deal. Greased some palms too.” 

Flynn eyed the train, gaze intent. “Smart to secure the area. All it would take is one person to recognize the man and the whole operation is blown. Though you’d think the demand of chasing people out might raise a few eyebrows.” 

“Not necessarily. She probably made it sound like he was an invalid who needed total peace and quiet. Wouldn’t surprise me if she claimed he had consumption--uh--TB.” If Victorians would respect anything, it would be TB. Flynn gave her a nod of acknowledgment at that, looking impressed. “Though given the state of medicine these days all she had to claim was ‘a nervous condition’ or something and that would have done it.”

“All right, so good news: Rittenhouse can’t get in the back of the car. Bad news: we can’t either.” Flynn nodded towards the rear door of the train, where a uniformed conductor stood, smart in his dark wool and brass buttons, obviously ready to redirect any passengers trying to get in through that door. “But you got us-- 

“I made sure we got the front half of that car,” Lucy interrupted. “Which means Rittenhouse didn’t get it. Lincoln’s party only took the four berths at the back of the car. And Jiya made sure that fourth bunk up front wasn’t available.” She smiled at Jiya. “Smart.”

“Well, Then we’d best go settle in early,” Jiya said. “And keep our eyes open.” Keeping her back straight, which the corset made simplicity itself, she headed for the door of the train, trusting that the two of them would follow. Maybe she couldn’t save Rufus, yet, but saving a man he respected seemed like a good stop to make along the way. Not to mention flipping Emma and Rittenhouse off would be more than worth it.


	7. 3x02: Midnight Train to Baltimore (Garcia: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, February 1861)

“These seriously will get more comfortable in the next ten years,” Lucy told them, eyeing the sleeper compartment. Hard wooden berths built into the walls, and he could already tell that sitting on the lower one and stooping to avoid hitting his head on the bottom of the bunk above would be a chore. 

“I’ve slept in worse,” he said with a shrug, testing the hypothesis. Well, Lincoln was about six four himself. Looked like he’d also end up hunching to either sit or lie in these compartments. Though he tried to not think too much about the man, given the last he’d seen him had been in the gory backspatter of a semi-automatic pistol putting two shots into the back of that head with its coarse black hair, in a panicked rush to get it done because Lucy was there, _Lucy was there_ , and he couldn’t make sense of anything, how could she be there to stop him, what was he even doing, and how could he even risk having to hurt or kill her? He’d never seen Abraham Lincoln’s face. Hadn’t wanted to, at that. 

He glanced towards the green canvas curtain separating their half of the car from the soon-to-be-Lincoln party to the rear. A canvas curtain, a flimsy theater box door; so frail a barrier, so easily pushed aside. He automatically touched the Glock in its holster. Lucy was right. He’d take this as a direct chance to atone for 1865. It felt like God smiling briefly on him after the pain of making him lose Lorena and Iris all over again--he couldn’t save them, but maybe, maybe, he could still try to haul himself out of the bottomless pit he’d flung himself into two years ago.

Getting aboard the train after the near-circus at the ticket counter was almost anti-climactic, but Garcia wouldn’t lie and say he hadn’t enjoyed the show they’d made of the agent. Granted, he’d mostly followed the lead of Jiya and Lucy on that, but being able to make bigoted idiots chase their own tails a little bit was one of the few unexpected pleasures he’d allow himself to indulge in. Not enough to cause a riot--generally speaking--but enough to make them sputter indignantly with tightly-corseted outrage.

And implying he was a godless Papist Catholic who gallivanted around with woman they thought was biracial who he assuredly wasn’t married to _and_ a woman he was claiming as his wife who also had been deliberately making eyes at Miss Julie--though Lucy’s winter gloves prevented the lack of wedding ring from being seen, and really, they’d better remedy that if they were going to keep that claim up. But it worked well, didn’t it? Married couples simply attracted less scrutiny in the past. _Coverture_. What an awful law. A woman didn’t cease to exist as a separate thinking, breathing, feeling being only because she said “I do”. He’d seen all too well with his mother the way a woman disappeared into a marriage. Though it wasn’t like Yugoslavia had exactly lagged behind America on overlooking its abused women. That was the world generally not giving a shit until it was forced into it. He and Lorena had actually argued about her taking his last name. 

_”You don’t need to, you know.”_

_”I want to, though. It’s joining our lives into something new. It’s a new start for me. Besides, I like the sound of ‘Lorena Flynn.’ Baltimore’s got enough Lithuanians that some could halfway manage ‘Valaitis’, but seriously, Garcia, it’ll be a different story in Croatia.”_

_“Have you **looked** at Croatian last names, Lorena? Mandžukić? Pjakaković?”_

_“Well, then ‘Flynn’ is going to be much easier for the kids anyway,” she’d said lightly. “And Lord knows it would be a pain in the ass to hyphen. Flynn-Valaitis?”_

_“Sounds like a disease,” he’d had to admit. “Or maybe...a circus.” Hands out in a dramatic gesture, he’d proclaimed, “And now, entering the center ring, turn your attention to these fifty perfectly matched Lippizaner liberty horses, the pride and joy of the Flynn-Valaitis Extravaganza! The! Greatest! Show! On! Earth!”_

_She grinned, nose crinkling, cheeks and nose deeply freckled after the Sudanese sun. “You’d look good in a red tailcoat and top hat.” She leaned over and kissed him. “Kind of makes me wish there was a good Halloween party for me to drag my fiance to…”_

The bittersweet ache still hit him, but it surprised him how it was gentler now, how he could smile at the remembrance along with the loss. Maybe she joked about circuses with Tim Wrangell too. And yeah, Wrangell would be an easier surname at school for the children than Valaitis would have been. She’d always been so practical.

But he needed to continue to walk away from that ghost when he could, to let it slip out the door someday, rather than holding it too close to his heart. He couldn’t be his mother, or his father, but he still didn’t know exactly how to let them go without feeling like he was forgetting or betraying. Especially not now when Emma’s gambit made everything feel so raw again, tearing open barely healed wounds. 

It was on the tip of his tongue, and he needed to turn to the present rather than the past, so before he thought better of it, he leaned across the aisle towards Lucy, saying tongue-in-cheek, “So, ready to admit yet I’m more fun on-mission than Wyatt?” Nothing meant by it than gentle fun--it wasn’t like there was some kind of war to be won by it. He was in no contest with Wyatt. First, because it was hardly a contest. Second, the man had no damn right to be meddling with her. Third, because Lucy’s choice in that was the only one that mattered, and he and Wyatt beating the hell out of each other in an alley would only make them both look like idiots. Fourth, because...well, she’d decided, hadn’t she? 

She’d given him to understand that they’d both tacitly, even if not directly, acknowledged something between them--and if that didn’t sound convoluted and Victorian, he really wasn’t sure what would. But they’d always been good at picking up the meaning behind the meaning. Somehow, Lucy being Lucy, she’d managed to say the right things to him on the Gettysburg battlefield. Told him that maybe that future was there between them, that she actually wanted that, but when he’d answered her, careful in his own way, that this was no good time and place for either of them, she’d agreed.

So, there it hung between them, delicate and strong as spidersilk, and he wouldn’t ever guess how the hell she’d thought him even worthy of a chance, how ready he’d been to never think to trouble her with how he felt. She’d almost forced him to say something back in Chinatown, and that was one of the few times he’d ever be grateful to Wyatt Logan for the interruption, once he’d tried to joke his way out of it and realized, suddenly terrified, that no, she _didn’t_ know that her erstwhile Croatian guard dog felt something for her far beyond what gratitude he should, and now he’d have to say it and those words would shatter everything between them. Because how could she feel the same for him, especially right in that moment, grief-stricken with her mother’s body sitting there behind her? 

He wouldn’t question the blessing of her somehow feeling things in return either. That might well make it vanish like a mirage. Deserved or not, apparently he’d gotten a second chance at some things if he only could someday be ready to take it. He’d just have to do his best to work towards being in a better place to offer her more than vague promises that he wanted that, careful words that acknowledged but committed neither of them to something they weren’t ready for yet, and do his damnedest to be a man worthy of her. Because he was a long, long way from that. 

She smiled, but he could see the trace of worry in her expression. No, he hadn’t intended to get Wyatt kicked off the mission. The man did that all by himself. But something had to be done, given he’d become the brooding black raincloud, and Garcia had run enough teams in his past to know that the team was only as good as their trust in each other. He almost told her he hadn’t intended it, but something in him stopped him, stubbornly insisted he shouldn’t apologize for being punched by an out of control raging man-child who couldn’t handle his current situation and was too weak and insecure to admit his failings and ask for help. Yes, Wyatt spoke the language of a clenched fist all too fluently. That was the problem. He’d even hit Lucy--of course _never his fault_ \--in his rush to attack Garcia last time, and maybe his own words had been too sharp, he’d admit that, because he’d been stinging with the rebuke of seeing still how little he was trusted. But nonetheless, Wyatt’s rage was out of control, the team’s dynamic was damaged, and he was frankly glad Denise had pulled him so they didn’t have to deal with that liability right now.

“I’ll admit it if she won’t,” Jiya said dryly.

“Thank you, finally _someone_ admits it.” He pulled his pocket watch from his vest pocket. Nine thirty--still time to kill. Exactly how he’d get access to sneak around the rear of the train looking for a bomb or suspiciously Rittenhouse-esque people, he’d have to figure that out soon. But for the moment, better to sit, and plan, and be ready, rather than rushing in and flying off the handle. Sheer dogged patience and the ability to wait sometimes was the hardest virtue of a covert mission, but he’d learned it over the years.

Though Lucy finally asked the question he could tell they’d all been pointedly avoiding. “What do we do if Jessica’s here in Philly, or Baltimore?” She asked it hurriedly, as if worried they’d flick open that green curtain, see Wyatt’s erstwhile dead wife there, and have to deal with that situation immediately.

He glanced at Jiya, seeing the hard, bright shine in her eyes. She had more reason than most to want blood. She’d betrayed Wyatt. She’d kidnapped Jiya, for fuck’s sake. Kidnapped her and, as he understood it, forced her to kill a man in trying to make her escape. Jessica had been there in the Bison Horn firing at them, trying to kill them.

Wyatt, even as much of a pain in the ass as he was, giving up on the arrogant _You don’t go near her_ crap and desperately pleading. He had to admit to his own conflict in this. “I only shot to wound her back in the saloon. There was...too much up in the air right then to make that call.” He could have put a round right between her eyes below the brim of that jauntily cocked little hat, done it coldly and calmly, because she’d left herself a wide open target on that staircase. But he had hesitated.

Tactically, it seemed too easily. She was the enemy. And yet--Rittenhouse got to her when she was so young, groomed her more intensely than Lucy, gave her no way out by their binding her with the chains of gratitude for her brother’s life. Forty-three years old and he’d seen it so much in country after country, conflict after conflict, and he was so damn sick of children being recruited, kidnapped, brutalized, brainwashed, cajoled, misled into fighting the wars of their elders. There he’d been at fifteen, an angry runaway looking so desperately to matter, clutching an ancient Kalashnikov he barely knew how to use, so utterly convinced he was doing the right thing, fighting for the freedom of his homeland. Burning to do nothing more than hunt down some Serbians to do it, because they were the enemy, they were swine, they were nothing, they wanted to keep Croatians under their thumb rather than let them determine their own fates. Oh God, he’d been such a child, seeing it all in such stark black and white, even as he tried to convince himself he was so grown up. It took Vukovar, it took Sarajevo, it took seeing that Croat and Serb and Bosniak all bled and died and did unspeakable things and were terrified for their families and their futures, for him to understand why he was fighting. By the time he came back from Chechnya and Tibet and joined the fighting in Kosovo, new flames of the same Balkans war raging years later, everything had changed. 

“I think Wyatt needs to be the one to make that choice in the end,” Lucy agreed, voice suddenly a bit husky. 

He hesitated, but couldn’t let that go. They’d never minced words with each other, had they? Maybe he hadn’t been so callously honest with her about her well-intended naivete and sometimes too infinite capacity for forgiveness since she got him out of prison, but yes, sometimes it was still there. Because he cared, and he was tired of seeing her instinctively bend over backwards to please people who didn’t deserve it. Because no, it wasn’t up to Wyatt in the end. “Yes, you heard me tell him he needs to decide what the hell he’s doing. But I’d say given what Jessica cost you, Jiya,” her gaze met his, her eyes dark and intent, “by kidnapping you and helping Emma murder Rufus that what Wyatt needs concerning her takes back bench.” His tone was utterly polite, but the air suddenly vibrated with tension between all three of them. “So, what do you need in this?”

He saw the faint tremor go through Jiya, her eyes going distant, as if she couldn’t handle the emotions suddenly thrust upon her. He could guess. He’d given her license to be cold, brutal, if that was what she needed. 

Lucy, trying to see the good as ever, protested. “Garcia, you’re being a little too ha--”

“No, Lucy, I’m not,” he said. “He’s a grown man. You all let him have his way for months by saying it was what he needed with Jessica. He needed space, he needed understanding, he needed everyone else to get out of his way and let him have what he wanted and give in time and time again so Wyatt Logan could get what he needed. What about what you needed all those months while he didn’t care how he hurt you by flaunting Jessica constantly? What about Jiya now? Emma and Jessica may have been the agents of what happened, but he directly enabled them. You all expect her to go on a mission with Wyatt now and trust him, accept it was a simple mistake that doesn’t matter, rather than something that’s cost her far too much. Or you, because what he did is also reason your mom’s dead. But you’ll do it, you’ll suck it up as you always do, because by God, it’s for the mission and it’s what _Wyatt Logan needs_.” The words were finally said, given freedom to do so without Wyatt’s glowering selfishness there to hold him back, and he couldn’t regret it. “You know what? Right now, to hell with Wyatt Logan and what he needs, because from what I’ve seen, he’s actually not been a great friend to any one of you in the past six months.” 

“He’s right,” Jiya cut in, the words coming out sharp and biting, hitting the air with the force of an explosion. He saw it on her face--the anger, the bitterness, the shame with herself. She hadn’t even realized till now how much she’d held back, how she’d smiled and been the good teammate, trying to not cause ruffled feathers or a fuss when the team was at its most vulnerable and fragile. “He’s _right_. Wyatt didn’t care about the rest of us when it mattered, and I’m tired of him trying to say that he didn’t mean it like he expects that to fix everything.”

“Jiya, he’s sorry--”

“Although you definitely forced your way onto this team without caring either,” Jiya said, eyeing him with an almost surgically sharp glare. Well, he deserved that. For his actions, and because he’d been the one to unleash this whole conversation anyway, but still, he couldn’t help but wait for his own flaying here with some trepidation. “You think it was easy for Rufus to go on missions with you, trust you, knowing you deliberately set him up to be killed, and all you could do was make snarky jokes about how you obviously didn’t mean it _this_ time because it would be so simple for you to do it?” She glanced over at Lucy. “Yes, maybe you were right and we needed him on that Salem mission because Wyatt bailed, and he definitely got you two home alive, and I’m grateful for that. But you sure as hell didn’t much care about Rufus’ opinion that day, and once you made it clear you were getting Flynn on that mission, there was no going back on him being on any mission after that.”

It felt strange that he could be all at once relieved and terrified. But this was a due reckoning, wasn’t it? All he could do was confess, regret, and hope that it somehow was enough. “You’re right. I could try to say it’s different because we were on opposite sides them, and it wasn’t personal. And it made sense because Rufus was their pilot, the three of them kept screwing with my plans, I’d tried to strand them alive in 1754 and that didn’t work, I’d tried to win them to my side in 1780 and that didn’t work either, so at that point, I was a desperate man and getting a man to just kill him seemed like was the most efficient way to get where I needed. So yes, I had my justifications, but those don’t matter in the end. Yes, I deliberately tried to have the man you loved killed. Yes, I’m the reason you ended up with your visions because you went to 1954 because Rufus was wounded. Yes, I made him work with me when I knew he’d rather not, and I’m not good with--” He sighed, glanced away. “I needed to start making up for what I’d done. But I was the asshole none of you wanted around, so it seemed safer to continue with that and make the jokes than let him just cut me up for it like I deserved. Maybe the fact he trusted me enough to ask me to come help rescue you, the person who he loved most, means he forgave me by then, and maybe it doesn’t. I don’t know. I never did get to apologize directly, and I should have. Maybe I’ll get that chance. I can only hope. But as to you--Jiya, I am sorry. If you’re willing, I’ll do my best to make it up to you. I told you once already, I owe it to him, and you, to help bring him back after I almost got him killed. But if you’d rather not work with me either, well...then I’ll respect that.”

It went beyond that, though. He was the reason Emma was even around in the first place. Rittenhouse might have set the whole scenario up, but he’d walked right into it, rescued her from 1882, put her within reach of the Mothership. He knew his own guilt in that. Knew that he couldn’t stop until he put it right and put Emma down. But if Jiya told him to get lost--nothing to be done. He’d have to find his own way again to try to fight Rittenhouse. Though she’d already told him she didn’t want him dead on Rufus’ account, that she wanted to him to give the mission to save Rufus everything he had. That was something. If nothing else maybe she’d still let him stick around and pay his debt.

Jiya sat there in silence for a few long moments, then wet her lips with her tongue, finally looking up at him again. “At least I believe you when you say you regret it. That you’ve thought a lot about your responsibility for it. And that you don’t expect me to get over it just because you’re sorry. So, fine. Apology accepted...Garcia?” She winced. “Yeah, so that’s still a little awkward. I’ll keep trying, OK?”

“OK,” he answered, feeling lighter than he had in a good while. “So...Jessica?” Jiya shrugged, obviously still not sure. Lucy rubbed the back of her neck, looking awkwardly uncertain herself. “All right. None of us want to make a definite call. Fine. Then maybe Wyatt’s input does matter. For now, if you both agree, I’d say we try to avoid or capture Jessica if we can.” He exhaled sharply, gathering himself to say the next words. “But only if that doesn’t put you two at undue risk. End of the day, _you’re_ my team.” Saying that finally felt right, rather than presumptuous.

The murmur behind the green curtain drew their attention. “All right, we’re on a mission,” Lucy said, features settling into a mask of determination. “Time to get at it, because sitting here isn’t helping.”

Seeing her marching towards the curtain, shoulders set, he couldn’t help but smile. Lucy Preston, ready to take on the world, and then somehow believe in it still at the end of the day. “Detective Warne? I know you’re there, so may we speak with you, please?”

He heard the tap of booted feet coming up from the rear of the car, and then the curtain was pulled aside. Kate Warne was a slender woman, her somewhat mousy brown hair and softly non-descript features perfect for someone doing undercover work, dressed in a plain blue calico blouse and hard-wearing black wool skirt. He could see the intelligence in those brown eyes as she regarded them. “You know my name, and the fact that you’ve deliberately insinuated yourself in this spot tells me you very likely know my business.” She breathed in, a look of ferocity coming over her. “I’ll warn you, though, that if you strike me down, I won’t be the only one who breathes their last tonight.” All right, a very Victorian _If I go down, I’m taking you with me_. He knew the hand that had slipped into her reticule would be clutching a derringer, presumably ready to kill him as the most present threat, not knowing that had he meant her and Lincoln harm, that thing would have been laughable against his Glock.

“We mean you no harm, Detective,” he told her.

“I’m Lucinda Flynn, this is my husband Gerald, and our...our friend, Juliette de Marigny. We’re--we’re a team of private agents of inquiry from Baltimore. And we became aware of the plot against Mr. Lincoln as you must be...as I heard only hours ago that you and Mr. Pinkerton were involved too.”

Warne inclined her head in acknowledgment of that. “Your diligence does you credit, but the situation is well in hand, Mrs. Flynn.”

“Is it?” Jiya said. “Because what we heard is there’s the threat of a bomb, or possibly an attack by assassins en route.” Warne’s eyes went wide at that.

“A bomb? They managed to follow our plans all the way to this train--how would they have known? Our agents have been absolutely discreet!”

“I can’t say how or who told them, but yes, they somehow know,” Lucy told her.

He sensed her trying to hand it off, and decided to run with it. After all, the big strong tough man was the only one who’d get idiots bragging to him while drunk at a bar, right? “Someone was bragging in the pub a few nights ago about having tracked your plans, and how they’d made their own move to counter. Heard an Irish surname, assumed for some reason that meant I’d be against pro-Lincoln sympathies, tried to recruit me.” 

Warne’s eyes narrowed in suspicious scrutiny. “Your accent certainly isn’t Irish.” _Never heard that one before. Thanks, Dad._

He’d spin a much easier story than the truth, even altered to fit this day and age. “I was named for my father, who died shortly before I was born. My mother, however, was from the Dalmatian coast, and went there after his death to be with family, and that’s where I was born and raised.” 

From how her air visibly eased, obviously she accepted that. “Who was it that told you about the plan? What more do you know?”

“I’m afraid their agent and I had an...altercation out in the alley when I tried to question him further, and given he tried to shoot me out there, he’s dead,” he said coolly. “Though no worries. Everyone there believes it was a matter of honor over him insulting my dear wife.” Was it wrong he kind of got an odd kick out of calling her that, even when it was only pretend?

“We know for sure there are certain elements aligned with the Southern sympathies that not only would see Mr. Lincoln dead,” Lucy told her, “but to make the deed particularly...dramatic.”

Thinking of overly dramatic gestures, he had the irreverent thought it was a good thing John Wilkes Booth wouldn’t get the notion for another four years. “He did say that I should go to another tavern, where I’d need to see a red-haired woman of about forty named ‘Emma’ to join the cause, though.” Complete speculation, but if Emma had been sniffing around this one herself, rather than letting underlings do it, he’d know now if Kate Warne had heard anything about her.

“And you, Miss--Mrs.--de Marigny?” she asked Jiya.

Jiya didn’t correct the title either way, and stood there with a straight face. “I’m a spiritualist as well as a detective.”

“I’ve had to play a fortune teller myself,” Warne said with a knowing smile.

“No, I genuinely have visions,” Jiya answered her coolly, tipping her chin up as if daring anyone to question her. “By the way, do a little more self-care, OK?”

“Self-care?” 

“You’ll go to any lengths on an investigation, which is pretty admirable, but you’re only human, and being exhausted from other cases, then ending up soaked and freezing in Chicago in January in 1868 while you’re busy on the chase? That would be a tough thing for anyone to survive.” Jiya’s level dark gaze spoke eloquently: _And you won’t_.

Given he doubted Jiya had done reading specifically about this woman before coming here to 1861, obviously she’d managed a quick vision, maybe right then while he and Lucy spoke to Warne first.

Warne swallowed hard, but to her credit, she didn’t back down, or laugh it off like someone from a far more cynical 1921, or 2018, probably would. So many Victorians had such faith and curiosity in the unknown--chasing the limits of knowledge in both science and spiritualism to the point that they became the twin dipoles that powered and drove their age. Somehow, they respected the power of both knowledge and faith. “Very well. We’re trying to keep this operation as discreet as we can, so how do you propose looking for this potential threat without causing a scene?”

Lucy glanced at him, obviously punting the ball back to him again. “Willing to deputize us as Pinkerton detectives for a little while, Detective Warne?” he said. She raised an eyebrow. “It lends me a little more authority,” he explained. Thought of claiming to be a Pinkerton in that New York hotel room, four months ago or fifty-eight years from now, and tried not to smile. _Flynn it up, huh?_

Too early in history for Pinkertons to have a badge, so he’d have to just bluff his way through it. “Then consider yourselves deputized,” she replied, and it said something about her confidence in her authority that she didn’t insist on waiting until Allan Pinkerton himself showed up. “Here. You can borrow my papers. Nobody bothers to read too closely.”

Jiya should come with him, since she’d be the most able to decipher any bomb Emma could have cooked up. “Julie, you’re with me. You’re the tipster causing this inspection. Lucy, darling, want to catch Detective Warne up?” he could practically see Lucy vibrating with excitement at another of her crushes on impressive historical women, and it was actually adorable. Might as well let her giddily enjoy it, and probably try to get more info from Warne while she was at it. She’d likely talk to Lucy most easily anyway.

“Of course, Gerry, _sweetheart_ , we’ll continue to make the plan,” Lucy assured him, and he couldn’t help but grin at the endearment, even if they both were only playing with each other. Something had changed, and the line between pretending a role and the hope of eventual reality had blurred enough that he liked the sound of it on her lips.

He nodded to Warne, brushing his way past her voluminous crinolined skirts--he’d love to light all those damn hoops on fire--and headed for the rear of the train to meet the conductor. “I’m Detective Flynn of the Pinkerton Detective Agency," he flashed the credential papers Warne had given him. 

“Detective de Marigny,” Jiya said with a nod, not bothering to appear less than confident in herself and her authority.

“There has been,” he lowered his voice and leaned down closer to the man’s ear, “some talk of an anarchist plot against this train.” Was he a couple decades early to throw the anarchist panic around? “I have no desire to cause alarm, you know, but she and I will need to inspect for explosives, or suspicious persons.” 

“We intend to accompany the train to Baltimore to assure its safe arrival,” Jiya told him.

The man’s face went pale, his eyes temporarily glassy with fear, and after the whole _bribe you to overlook this whole weird thing with my “invalid brother”_ he’d gotten from Kate Warne, this really had to be screwing with his day. But to his credit, he recovered quickly. “Of course. But be quick, and discreet. The train is due to leave in,” he consulted his battered silver watch, “thirty-seven minutes, and if there are undue delays, there’ll be hell to pay, and too many explanations and frightened passengers.”

“I’ll be an engineer conducting a routine inspection,” he said, reaching out and clapping the man companionably on the shoulder. Jiya, rolling with it, whipped a small notebook and pencil from her reticule, looking the part of the assistant of a somewhat eccentric engineer who’d preferentially take on a brown-skinned woman rather than a good solid white man. Though some would probably have smarmy musings about a pretty young woman like Jiya, and exactly what role she played as his “assistant” and presumably his bit of fancy on the side. Oh well. It was a ruse they’d need to hold up for only a few hours. 

“Has there been anyone suspicious crawling around the train at all?” Jiya asked him.

“No, not that we’ve noticed.”

Hopping off the train, down the the track, he crouched and started inspecting the undercarriage, looking for anything unusual. He could sense Jiya following, her shorter stature giving her more ability to look further in. Scanning the length of the train, perhaps twenty cars in all, he quickly prioritized. “Cover only the first three to four cars,” he said. “Our window’s limited, and I don’t see that Rittenhouse would bother with more than that.” And bombing the train that far up would probably imply a plan to detach the rear cars and possibly take Lincoln hostage, steal him away somewhere below the Mason-Dixon. 

That was a possibility, but it seemed less likely. What could happen with taking a president-elect hostage, unless they meant to drag him somewhere and make it a dramatic murder before a roaring crowd, and in doing so, almost inevitably spark the damn Civil War anyway? Killing him outright, before the secession, and making go away quietly by having it seem like the act of a couple of random terrorist lunatics, was the only thing that made sense.

Nothing. No bomb, whether primitive Victorian or sleekly modern, and the two of them ended up jockeying a bit to try to look in every possible nook and cranny. Every now and again he’d make some remark about “The struts should have closer spacing on the next model,” or “Humboldt’s delivery is prompter than Yardley’s, so let’s fully order the wheel casting there next time,” Jiya would jot something down and say something appropriate in response, and neither of them got much of a second glance because of it.

“Not on the undercarriage.” He shook his head. “No time to check between or under seats, except in the rear car--and Lucy will have done that. I’ll have to get the roof quickly.” Less likely that they’d put an explosive up there, as the blast would be far less effective, but maybe someone was dumb, lazy, or hadn’t been able to access a better location.

“Be careful,” Jiya muttered, shaking her head. “I can’t climb up there in these skirts, so it’s up to you.”

He nodded, grabbing the ladder on the front end of the third car, swinging nimbly up onto it, and ignoring the faint protest from his right arm. “Then keep a lookout.”

Men of his size weren’t really meant to skulk along a train roof trying to look inconspicuous, but right now the train cars were gently curved at best rather than some of the elaborately curved or stepped versions of later years, which helped his field of vision immensely. Nothing up here. So--no bomb?

Then he looked down, and it felt like watching a bad play, seeing a young man heading towards the rear of the train with that furtive air he recognized from too many years on the job. Hurrying, because it was nearly eleven, and he clearly had a job to do, to judge from the mahogany leather bag he clutched in his right hand. Looking around without trying to look like he was looking around--amateur. How long had this sleeper been here? However well he might fit in 1860, he stuck out like a sore thumb as a saboteur.

Glancing down, he decided to hell with it. The element of surprise was on his side, and a big man like him, assisted by gravity, made for a hell of a wrecking ball. Crouching down, getting his hands down on the train roof, he vaulted off it, right into their would-be Lincoln bomber. Perfect hit, took him right down to the ground with virtually no effort, and he landed with one knee right in the middle of the man’s back, and the move was instinctive, hands gripping his head and giving a vicious twist. He felt rather than heard the _crack_. Just another fool who’d tripped over the rail, fallen, and broken his neck. Much easier to explain than a gunshot.

He looked up and saw Jiya. “All right,” she said, shaking her head with a whistle of admiration, “that was some straight-up Assassin’s Creed stuff there.”

“Assassin’s Creed.” That had been a movie, right? He’d seen a billboard for it somewhere, in those years on the run before coming to Mason Industries to steal the Mothership. Topeka? Miami? They all tended to blend in his memory by now, because they’d all been simply a place to hide and lay low for a little while and continue to wait, plan, and watch.

“Video game? Band of secret fighters throughout history trying to prevent the control of the evil Templars who want to worm their way into control of society and people’s general free will? Badass parkour moves just like,” she nodded to the train roof, “ _that_? OK, they’re reliving historical memories in the ANIMUS rather than actually traveling like we do in the Lifeboat, but still--”

All right, so maybe it did sound a bit similar, but he still couldn’t place it. She sighed, a look of disappointment on her face. “So you and Lucy both, huh? Giant history dorks, but your nerd cred is terrible. We’re getting a PS4 when we get back and both you and Lucy are playing the series.” 

“Noted.” He nodded towards the leather bag. “Do we have our little ticky-ticky-boom in there?”

She opened it and peered in as he hitched himself up off his knees. “Yep.”

“Can you defuse it?”

“Yeah, sure.” She shook her head. “I can tell Emma didn’t build this one. Amateur hour. Even you could probably do it. She must be too busy working on her next insane plot. Got a pocketknife?”

He handed it over, leaning in to see the innocuous blue plastic stopwatch counting its way to doom with the majority of the bag stuffed full of C4. One hour and thirteen minutes left. Yes, Lincoln most definitely would have been blown to smithereens by that much explosive.

Jiya dug around the bag, opening the blade of the pocketknife, and barely two minutes later, she breathed a sigh of relief. “Done. I’m guessing we try to chuck this off a bridge somewhere en route and drown it?”

“Well...you actually can safely time travel with C4.” As he well had cause to know, given he’d used more than his share of it in his inglorious days of yore. “So maybe we should take it back. Never know when you might need it.”

“Yeah, I suppose you found that out. How exactly did you afford that much C4 anyway? And paying all your henchmen from Minions-R-Us or whatever? Were they all henchmen, or were there some henchwomen?” Her tone was playful rather than accusatory, so he’d go with it.

He shrugged. “Placed some high payout sports bets, made some investments and went back to get them twenty years later. That got a lot easier once the Mothership had an infinite battery.” Did the Mothership still have an infinite battery at that? Maybe if they were lucky Emma shot herself in the foot with that as an unexpected consequence of her little Baltimore detour. He’d honestly planned that one solely because with the blitz attack he had planned on Rittenhouse, the absurdly long recharge of the Mothership wouldn’t do. Much as they complained about the Lifeboat recharge time, the Mothership, bigger and with more horsepower, took even longer. “And yes, there were henchwomen. I was an equal opportunity employer.”

Jiya laughed and shook her head, redoing the bag’s clasps and handing it to him. “You’ve got style, I’ll give you that.” 

He’d take it. “Let’s give the good news.” Though he still wouldn’t let down his guard until they made it to Baltimore. Maybe Emma had sent someone else on this one to make sure, or maybe she’d half-assed it as one of Carol and Nicholas’ planned missions she’d spring to see if it worked, but not waste much effort. Trouble was he couldn’t know for sure.

Sitting silently in the compartment, bag tucked safely away on the bunk, they all heard the bustle behind the green curtain as Kate Warne’s invalid brother, his doctor, and his assistant arrived. The train jolted into motion what seemed barely a minute later. They all exchanged nervously triumphant smiles.

The curtain suddenly got swept aside. “Mr. Lincoln would like to thank you,” Warne said simply, and behind her, the tall figure with his homely face stepped forward, sweeping off the unfamiliar soft felt hat, muffled up in a plaid shawl against the chill in the air. They all instinctively stood.

For a minute he didn’t want to look up, remembering Ford’s Theater all over again. Lucy’s screams, Mary Todd Lincoln’s screams, Lincoln’s involuntary gasping moan. Landing on that stage in front of a shocked audience and having an absurd moment of triumphant arrogance at not having snapped his ankle like John Wilkes Booth had at making that leap, _never send an amateur to do a professional’s job_ , and then that immediately gave way to the wave of bleak guilt and horror and self-recrimination. He sensed Lucy stepping in first, probably giving the man absolutely no clue they’d met already four years in the future and she’d probably gushed over him them too. Jiya, more reserved, but still accepting her due praise, joking about her husband she’d had to leave home, an Illinois man himself. He finally stuck his hand out, figuring he’d best get it over with. Unfortunately, his usual trick of staring over someone’s head didn’t work when the man was roughly on par with his own height, and he had to look at the man’s face for the first time.

“Don’t know that some of our American voters will thank you for it, Mr. Flynn, but you have my gratitude.” Lincoln’s handshake was firm, strong--a self-made, plain-spoken man who that Garcia Flynn before it all had respected. 

He shrugged, wet his lips nervously. “Can’t win all the voters, sir.” Especially since white women couldn’t vote yet until 1920, Native Americans in 1924, and for all intents and purposes, blacks until 1965 or even later. “Though they’ll come around, I’m sure.” History certainly would.

He glanced aside at Kate Warne, seeing the admiration and determination in her to defend this man against attack. She couldn’t even vote, was barely seen as a person under the law, and yet, she’d helped make this happen. Letting go Lincoln’s hand, he couldn’t help but try. Maybe it would make some small difference. He knew the inevitability of fate would likely catch up with him, “I heard you’re fond of theatricals. In the Capitol, I’d advise avoiding Ford’s Theater. We’ve never had a good experience there.” He heard Lucy’s nervous strangled laugh at that.

“Much to do, this business of running a country that’s looking like a hornet’s nest these days. It leaves little time for amusements, Mr. Flynn,” Lincoln said, giving one last smile and turning back to his compartment.

“If you need a job, Mr. Pinkerton would certainly like to talk,” Warne told them with a friendly wink. “You did some good work.”

Jiya smiled in return. “Maybe someday, but for now, we three like being freelance.”

Sitting back down, they tried their best to stay awake in the unheated car, their feet perched on the carpet-covered hot water bottles the conductor had laid down in the aisle to help keep their feet from freezing, all of them pulling their coats more tightly around them. He wasn’t sure his toes had been this frozen since chasing into the Missouri wilderness to retrieve Emma. All of them cold and tired and drowsy because of it, but doing their best to stay awake. “If you two want to sleep…it’s not like I can fold myself into these bunks, but you probably can.”

“We’re fine,” Lucy said, shaking her head, giving him a reassuring smile. “Do you really believe--” she asked him.

“That he’ll remember four years from now that some private detective told him Ford’s Theater sucked, and it’ll matter?” He laughed, shaking his head. “Not at all. He’s got more important things to do. And if not then and there, it’ll still happen.” He suspected there was too much force of fate behind that one, too many angry and indignant Southern sympathizers, too little presidential security. “But still...I had to try.”

“After he gets raked over the coals in the press for sneaking into DC like this, people claiming it was undignified and paranoid, he’ll keep his security detail light. So yes, it’ll happen. But it didn’t happen today. And it won’t be you this time. You’re trying. You’re doing the right thing now. That’s what’s important.” She reached out, her gloved fingers brushing his own for a moment, and he wanted to turn his palm over, catch her hand in his and hold on, but Jiya sitting right there watching made him hesitate. So he let go. 

Lucy nodded back towards the rear compartment. “Pinkerton always called her the ‘best female detective in the world’. She’s done amazing work undercover already, and she'll go on to help the espionage efforts in the Civil War in incredible ways.” 

“And die in 1868, probably before she can really have an impact on female detectives overall as more than an outlier,” Jiya said heavily. “Brief candle, huh?”

“Maybe not, now,” he told her. “No telling.” Maybe some things could change with her visions, as glum as she felt about their inevitability after Rufus. It would do her some good to get a win. “Maybe she’ll live a long life and do even more incredible things.”

“Hey, Garcia?” Jiya pulled the blanket from her bunk and wrapped it around her shoulders. He noticed she hesitated a little less in using his name that time.

“Yeah?” He somehow kept his teeth from chattering. The rhythmic _clack_ of the rails as they carried on into the Chesapeake winter night felt strangely soothing. 

“You’re getting there. But you’re still not getting that hug yet.”

He couldn’t help but laugh at that. “Fair enough.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are unfortunately no known photographs of Kate Warne, and only very vague descriptions of her being slim and somewhat ordinary-looking, so I had to use my imagination a bit on her coloring, etc. Hope I did America's first female detective some justice.


	8. 3x02: Midnight Train to Baltimore (Emma/Jessica: Manhattan, Kansas, July 2018)

The Mothership popped back out of the timestream, and with it, Emma’s ears felt the pressure until she yawned sufficiently to pop them. Jessica looked queasy, shoulders hunched in her harness, breathing too hard and sweating. Time sickness or morning sickness or some unfortunate combination of both, Emma couldn’t be quite sure, given she’d never time traveled until the Chinatown mission when she’d already been knocked up.

Darla looked better, and she’d handled the pilot controls with confidence on this one. “Good job,” she complimented her, seeing the way the younger woman lit up at the approval, dark hazel eyes luminous with the giddy pleasure of being praised by someone she admired. 

Up until a few months ago she’d been just another Rittenhouse recruit, Darla Jiminez, another bullet in the arsenal, another maybe-useful no-heritage nobody who would do the majority of Rittenhouse’s grunt work in hopes of maybe impressing the bluebloods someday. Screw all that. Emma had toppled that regime and done it gladly, and Darla had more than paid back the opportunity. Having a kid who’d was a mere 22 thus could travel as far back as late June of 1996 could be really useful. Had proved very useful, when she’d taught the girl to pilot enough to send her on a very particular mission last month. Didn’t hurt she’d pre-programmed most of the jump math herself, but Darla had an instinct for the controls. Another bright mind, graduated two months ago from CalTech, who’d have gone to waste stuffed in the back of Rittenhouse’s arsenal, especially Nicholas’ stuffy “white men only” vision of things.

“Hate to say it,” Jessica said, unfastening her harness, “given I know that was just a couple hours and finding Luke to activate him, but...I need a nap.”

“Don’t need to apologize,” Emma told her. “I heard second trimester’s a bitch. Besides, not like we were needed after we sent Luke on his way. This was an easy run.” Another half-baked plot of Nicholas’, the idea that assassinating Lincoln early would prevent the Civil War and presumably help preserve the powerful white status quo. 

Given she’d dropped Luke Cantrell off in Baltimore in 1858 herself, nine months ago in one of multiple flurries, she figured she’d pull the trigger and see what happened, given it was an easy trip. If nothing else it’d keep the Lifeboat crew busy chasing their tails again for a little while. Assuming Flynn had managed to scrape himself together enough to make the Lifeboat rather than staying in “sad rabid puppy” mode. She’d seen with Anthony that he was as liable to turn as friend as foe when he got upset and desperate. She’d counted on it.

She’d had to do something to deal with Flynn, after all. Because with what he knew about Rittenhouse, and his fanatical drive, him aligning with the Mason Industries crew after they obviously broke him out of prison to use him--that was about the worst possible outcome. She’d tried to warn Carol and Nicholas about that alliance, but apparently her seeing the man up close and personal for a couple of months, earning his trust, still meant her opinion counted for nothing. For them, Flynn was some deranged terrorist with a vendetta, a rabid dog, and that was it.

No, actually, the worst possible outcome was him becoming an integral part of that team rather than the obligatory nuisance, and she knew it. Wasn’t like Wyatt Logan could strategize his way out of a paper bag, from what she’d seen. Run-and-gun hotheads were a dime a dozen, and Jessica had played him perfectly besides, so he wasn’t that clever. Flynn could _plan_ , he was organized and driven and ruthless and resourceful, and that made him dangerous even when he was a mere wounded lone wolf. If they actually started to trust him, if they gave him the human ties the man so damn obviously needed to feel like an emotionally functional and stable human being again, if they became his _team_ , that made him infinitely more dangerous. 

And of course, it wasn’t like he had a Jessica on hand like Wyatt did, to become an emotional lever to help break him. Flynn had some weird thing about Lucy--why the hell did _everyone_ worship that helpless little pampered princess anyway--seemed like something with that super secret diary he kept consulting that she’d never gotten a chance to steal and read. But she didn’t get the vibe that he loved her. He was one of those men who made themselves untouchable, because she’d made a few overtures, would have seduced him if that was what he’d needed to trust her rather than her playing his new friend and ally. But she’d seen quickly that he wasn’t interested in sex. Nobody could take the place of the dual mental monuments he’d worshipped at, cast in cold marble, of his dead wife and the perception of his own monstrosity. She could have told him that real monsters didn’t worry for a second about what they did. They slept soundly at night. They accepted that nobody else mattered except them and theirs, that everything was justified, and they made that their power. 

But he’d shown her the chink in his armor in his pathetically obvious need to have someone who believed in his cause, and told him that he wasn’t as bad as he thought he was, that what he did was justified. Laid out the whole plan about how he’d bring his wife back and just see her happy with her first love, if it wouldn’t mean erasing his daughter permanently. He’d handed her the knife. Not Emma’s fault she’d used information so freely offered. She would bet he could have handled Lorena happily married to someone else, but knowing he was forever helpless to save his daughter without ruthlessly killing four other kids--he couldn’t make that sacrifice. He would have killed for his daughter, would have died for her, but having to abandon her, even in the name of a greater good--he’d been a good parent. So he’d forever feel the guilt of that. She knew that now in this past month with an even more bone-deep certainty.

Honestly, she had to hope Darla’s good work in 1992 and 1996 made Flynn do something stupid like steal the Lifeboat or turn on them, or they kicked him off their team. She hadn’t hoped she was so lucky as to have the timeline change so much he’d never be involved with this whole time travel thing to begin. He’d come too close to Rittenhouse and the time machine in 2014, and that was why Benjamin Cahill made the call to kill Flynn and his family. That was sound, but then he’d followed it with the asinine decision to not pursue Flynn to the ends of the earth to make sure the job was done, trusting that Flynn had somehow _learned his lesson_ from having his family slaughtered and being framed for it by high and mighty Rittenhouse. 

Ben Cahill would get his due, sitting vulnerably in prison as he still was. Another arrogantly stupid old man who thought he knew best, and a loose end she couldn’t afford. As for his and Carol’s entitled brat, the gloves were now off. Rittenhouse belonged to those who’d earned it, not having it handed over as some kind of ridiculous birthright. Though she’d shown a few moments of steel when she’d held a gun to Emma’s head, and she’d known looking into Lucy’s eyes that she’d pull the trigger. Between that, shooting an unarmed and injured man, and being willing to blow up the Mothership and strand herself in 1918--or maybe blow herself up with it--there were a few rising flickers of strength in Lucy Preston. Something learned and earned, not inherited, so Emma could almost respect that. 

As for Flynn, she’d have to hope she hit his soft spots squarely, because the man was apparently damn near impossible to kill. She’d seen him shake off numerous injuries when she’d planted herself as his pilot. She’d seen him stagger on the porch of the Bison Horn as Rufus went down, and from how embarrassingly slow he’d been to chase after her and Lucy, stumbling onto the scene like Frankenstein’s shambling monster, taking shots at her that were as laughable as Lucy’s, she must have scored one hell of a shot on him. But he’d survived nonetheless. 

And stumbling as she was from the wound to her calf from Lucy’s lucky shot, she wasn’t taking chances on sticking around to give him point-blank range. Flynn, 1919 truce off and with his usual urge to murder her--predictable wounded male ego at being outsmarted by a woman--intact, and him having a loaded twenty-first century gun, unlike Princess Lucy. Odds never in her favor, to bastardize Katniss Everdeen a bit. 

Wyatt was neutralized because he was a helpless emotional child and wouldn’t dare to hurt Jessica, especially with her pregnant. Lucy was still mostly useless, and Emma had proved in that alley exactly how weak she truly was, so she was hopefully running scared, hiding behind her _big strong men_ as usual. Jiya, half-trained as a pilot at best, hopefully hadn’t fully crawled out of the pit of her grief. If she’d managed to score a solid hit on Flynn with her plan to bring back a happy Lorena while simultaneously forever denying him Iris, she’d knocked that entire team on their ass. 

“Mind if I keep running the sim?” Darla asked, brushing her riot of curly dark hair out of her eyes.

“By all means.” She smiled, shook her head. “You might want to change, first, though,” gesturing to the heavy crinoline getup the girl was still wearing, and the fur cape around her shoulders.

“Oh yeah!” Darla’s hazel eyes went wide, and she grinned sheepishly, looking so incredibly young. Only nine years younger by birthdate, but given her extended sojourn on the frontier, at forty-one, Emma was literally old enough to be her mother now. 

“Hey, I get it. I didn’t want to get out of the pilot’s chair either once I knew it was possible.” She couldn’t help but grin at the enthusiasm. Yeah, it was a new Rittenhouse. She couldn’t be the only pilot, and look what idiots they’d been to prefer to kidnap Jiya rather than bother to train another pilot themselves. Rittenhouse was tiny, she’d admit that. A lot of them had fallen by the wayside with the huge bust last spring, scared off, and of the dedicated core that had remained, she’d found that a coup hadn’t endeared her to some of the others who apparently did worship the idea of a hereditary monarchy, because that was clearly so very American. They’d taken their haughty indignation elsewhere. 

It didn’t matter. What handful of people she had left were solid, sharp arrows ready to be aimed, bright minds willing to do their part, and eager to make their mark in a Rittenhouse that hadn’t valued them properly to this point. They were both capable and hungry, and that was the best possible combination. She had big plans for them, and throwing their lives away needlessly like Nicholas had, treating them like interchangeable LEGO pieces to be spent on a whim, wasn’t on the table.

She’d train new pilots like Darla--pilots she could trust, pilots who had promise and merit--let them earn their place. Besides, she’d be unable to do missions in a while herself. Look what Darla had done with a month of intense training during the month of enforced idleness with both bosses, Emma and Jessica, recovering from injuries and formulating the new plan. She and Jessica were too old to go to 1992, let alone 1996, so Darla had dropped them off in 1975 for a little while--Emma had wanted them there, because she wasn’t going to risk their memories being altered by whatever changes Darla was about to enact. Darla, all alone, had put up brilliant work as a pilot and an agent in turning Lorena and Iris Flynn into a barb in Garcia Flynn’s heart that would never come out. Emma couldn’t help but be proud of her for that. 

Darla said shyly, “The whole world melts away, you know?” 

“Yeah.” She reached out and patted Darla on the shoulder. She needed to get changed herself, because she was boiling in her current clothes. Maybe have a nap too. Crossing the silo floor, she hit the control for the door and headed out onto the hard-packed dirt on the farmyard, unbuttoning the top buttons of her shirtwaist as she went, tipping her head back and enjoying the sunlight and warmth after the winter Baltimore chill. 

Kansas felt familiar in a bone-deep way. Miles and miles of open board-flat prairie with endless horizon, corn waist high against the blue July skies, people buying cheap beer and brats and charcoal briquettes at the grocery store, talking football and crop prices. America’s heartland. The good ol’ salt of the earth simple folk uncorrupted by cities, so they liked to think.

She’d grown up somewhere just like this, up in Iowa. Blooming Prairie, a nowhere town near Mason City. Connor had loved to tease her about that: _Mason City to Mason Industries, eh, Emma? It must have been a touch of destiny._ The few good memories of Dad included riding on his lap, her tiny hands clutching the steering wheel of the old John Deere tractor, the bright green paint faded to almost a tired army khaki-olive. Feeding the animals. Watching the Hawkeyes play football on TV and he let her steal a sip of beer, and she hated it and loved it all at once. Going deer hunting. Fishing for walleye. His callused hand reaching down and mussing her hair, red as his, him grinning down at her, calling her his “baby carrot.” Back when she was still too small, too ignorant, to understand that trusting and loving Bill Whitmore, trying so hard to be better and please him, was the stupidity of a naive child. Before she realized that she and her mom didn’t deserve the smacks, that Janet Whitmore would actually send her to bed early to try to deflect the rage onto herself. 

Fuck the Hawkeyes. Fuck Bill Whitmore. Fuck Mason City. She’d never been back since the night when she was fourteen and she and her mom sneaked out and took the old battered Dodge station wagon. Both of them driving west with the clothes on their backs and what bags they’d been able to hide in the downstairs closet that day while Dad was out shooting pool with his buddies down at Delmont’s. They’d heard about the Twin Towers on the radio somewhere in the middle of Nebraska, in between crappy radio reception, and she hadn’t been sure whether the world falling apart while they were making their escape was a bad omen, or simply a sign that everything was changing.

But she had to admit that farm country like this made a good place to hide, especially since she could slip back into that corn-fed farm girl persona, because it was hers too and her worthless father couldn’t take that from her. Her soft CalTech classmates would have all died in a hurry in the situation Emma had been in. Dumped in the middle of nowhere in 1870, playing dead to Mason Industries, ordered by Rittenhouse to tough it out until further orders because _eventually_ they’d get the time machine and come for her. He’d taught her some of the skills she’d needed, that was true, fishing and hunting and raising chickens and the like. But it was surviving that bastard gave her the steely toughness she needed.

Living near Manhattan, Kansas, in 2018 was a cakewalk in comparison. She would admit, if only to herself, she might have picked their specific hiding place in the vast ocean of the Great Plains due to a bit of engineering whimsy with the name as a nod to Oppenheimer. But sometimes she thought about that frontier cabin still. She’d never been quite sure which state it was in, given how close to the border it was and how imprecise maps were, especially for still-wild territory. West bank of the Missouri River, so it wasn’t in Missouri, but whether it was in Nebraska or Kansas was up for debate. Not like she had the exact GPS coordinates, but she’d known that land like the back of her hand, could have pulled up Google Earth and found it, found the coordinates. 

She hadn’t, though. Maybe she didn’t want to see the place that had been the closest thing in her life she’d had to peace and quiet and being free from anyone’s demands vanished, turned into some golf course or soybean field. Maybe she didn’t want to know what state it was in. It felt right to let it remain Schrödinger’s Cabin, both Nebraska and Kansas at the same time. Much like her, 2015 and 1870 all at once, and now both 1882 and 2018.

She was smarter than Carol, smarter than Flynn had been initially, with their odd hellbound determination to hang around California as a modern homebase, with the entire world at their disposal, and make their operations ridiculously vulnerable to getting raided--personally, no less--by Christopher’s team. She suspected in Flynn’s case it was mostly keeping himself conveniently prepared to strike likewise against them if an opportunity presented itself. If they hadn’t been snug and secure at Mason Industries, and no way in hell he was successfully breaking in there twice, she suspected he’d have planned a counterstrike to try to destroy the Lifeboat in 2017. So a dangerous tactic, but at least strategically sound, she’d give him that. But he'd gotten much smarter and moved to Mexico City by the time he'd come and gotten her from 1888.

But in Carol’s case she was a snobby Bay Area academic who’d probably deigned to leave California very reluctantly and only for work reasons in her entire life, and couldn’t imagine anywhere else being worth her time. Sort of fitting the bitch died in San Francisco, given what a complete snob she was about it, but the fact she’d died on the seedier side of town in a Chinese photography studio only made Emma feel even more pleased at that ruthless twist of the knife.

So one of the first things she’d done after coming back from 1888 was to evacuate off in a hurry from the warehouse, get the hell out of California. They’d pretty much be able to see anyone coming for miles. The farmhouse was comfortable, they had the barn for storage, and the silo hid the Mothership and its necessary equipment perfectly, even if a bit tightly, so that would do.

Apparently they’d gotten smarter too, because by the time she’d jumped the Mothership to their bunker with Jessica, a week after it all went down and their wounds healed enough to make the trip, they’d cleared out too with the Lifeboat. No clue where they went, and unfortunately, Rufus and Jiya were better programmers than her--she’d admit it reluctantly, but she’d admit it--so she hadn’t been able to reciprocate their trick of having a tracker on the Mothership. Besides, they’d built the damn beacon on the Lifeboat after she’d disappeared from Mason Industries to begin, so she’d missed out on all that spec and development. Too bad Rittenhouse decided she needed a hard loyalty test right then.

But she’d passed, and now she was in charge. She headed upstairs, stripping off the 1860’s clothing in favor of a t-shirt and shorts, and went to check on Jessica. She’d been the pilot that went to ass-end-of-nowhere El Cruce, Texas, in November of 1986--just made it before her own birthdate in March of 1987--to save a little Kevin Gaines from leukemia. 

She’d seen the little blond girl then, trying anxiously to protect Kevin, curious and vivacious. It was Carol who’d done the groundwork in the years since, as Emma couldn’t travel back, recruiting and grooming Jessica all through her childhood and young adulthood and beyond, but when she’d seen the grown woman of thirty-five step out of the Lifeboat, still, she’d felt responsible, in a sort of big sister way. The way Jessica obviously now needed someone, somewhere to belong--Emma could give her that. Let her stop being just a bartender and a neglected wife. She could become something truly powerful and magnificent. She could help change the world for the better for herself and her child.

She knocked on Jessica’s door. “Come in,” she heard, and pushed open the door, pushing a little hard against the faint stick of the antique wood gone swollen in the summer heat. Jessica was lying on the bed, on top of the blue and white quilt, dressed in a tank top and cutoffs, top pushed up and left hand resting on the faint bump of her stomach. Emma noticed she still hadn’t taken off that wedding ring. “How are you holding up?” 

“OK,” Jessica replied, propping herself up on her elbows, pushing her hair out of her eyes. “Never knew how growing a kid sucks all the energy out of you sometimes.”

“You want to stay back on the next mission?”

“I….” She looked conflicted. “I don’t want to be a burden…”

“Hey,” Emma told her. “You’re making a life, OK? That’s not a weakness. If you need to stay back, we’ll be all right.” But some part of her did want Jessica on the missions, wanted her to see her place in things, to let her belong. “Rittenbitches policy is that we provide ample maternity leave for our employees.”

“It’s supposed to get better soon.” Jessica grinned wryly. “Though I’m not sure that harness is maternity-capable. And from what Lucy was telling me,” Emma tried to not wince at mention of the lady of the manor, “I understand pregnant women in public were seen as,” she adopted a breathy, almost Marilyn Monroe-esque voice, “ _scandalous_.” She considered for a moment. “She was trying to joke and make me feel better. It was kinda awkward, though.”

She’d been around the historical block enough to know. “Part scandalous to make it obvious you’d been doing some screwing recently, part superstition and safety precaution of not risking the kid’s well-being or yours, so it was better to stay at home.” She smirked. “Preferably wrapped in cotton wool, I guess.” Until you risked dying in childbirth or of a subsequent fever from unsterile conditions, or of sheer exhaustion from an endless series of births and miscarriages.

“Then I want to go for as long as I’m good,” Jessica said, eyes sparking with determination.

“Some time periods will be easier than others. I mean, Catherine the Great hid an entire nine-month pregnancy, and the Grand Duchess of Russia--the crown princess, basically--she was about as public as it gets.” Right around the time of Empress Elizabeth's death, she’d hidden and borne Grigori Orlov’s child, fostered out and hidden away. She took a deep breath. “Might as well go hard these next months, you and me, and get some solid groundwork in place. I’m gonna be...laid up myself for a few months not too long after you. Looks like I’m pregnant too. About two months in.”

Jessica’s eyes went wide. “Wait, what? You’re kidding me!”

Garcia Flynn clearly hadn’t wanted to be seduced. Nicholas Keynes--that was an entirely different story. She’d done her best to wrap him around her finger with sex and guile, and when she’d sensed that wouldn’t be enough...well, she’d always wanted a kid anyway, and she wasn’t getting any younger, and she had absolutely no desire to tie herself to a man permanently. Sperm donor was good enough, in her opinion, and Nicholas wasn’t all that perceptive but he was attractive and fairly smart, so he’d do. And he talked about his Ruth so wistfully sometimes that she knew he’d dote on any child she might have. Besides, bearing another precious blueblood heir of David Rittenhouse was another iron in the fire for her, something the snobs couldn’t deny. It would have cemented her place forever in Rittenhouse. She'd admit it also had been too satisfying to imagine her kid eventually superceding the place of Carol’s precious prodigal Lucy, and Carol gnashing her teeth and screaming internally at having to acknowledge Emma’s new place in the organization.

Of course, a few shots from a Colt 1911 worked just as well, in the end. Quicker and cleaner, and she’d earned her place in Rittenhouse through hustle and action rather than waiting for it to be handed to her. But she’d still gotten that baby in the end. Must have been one of those last times she slept with Nicholas before they went to Chinatown.

She’d honestly debated getting an abortion. It wasn’t the best time, right as she was trying to cement her hold on things. But she had months yet to lay her plans, and get the right people in place. This was her chance to have it all: Rittenhouse, a world reshaped for Americans who had the drive and wits to seize their own opportunities, a child of her own to raise in that world. She’d earned that, so she was going to make it work. “Yeah.”

“Nicholas?” 

Emma slanted her a sidelong look. “Wyatt?” she asked dryly in return, nodding to Jessica’s belly, pointing out the obviousness of the question. 

“Hey, sorry,” Jessica said, blushing a little. “It’s...do you...I mean, you shot Nicholas.”

“I don’t regret it,” she said bluntly. “He and Carol would only have held us back. Just like Wyatt wanted to keep you small, Jess.” She took the risk of using the diminutive, but it seemed to fit, and it felt right. “He only ever wanted you as the small town Texas girl he grew up with and married, the bartender with no ambitions of her own, the good little wife who’d be there to bake pies when he came home the big hero back from saving the world, and not raise a fuss when he left you behind, again and again. He kept doing it in the bunker, right? He never wanted you to let grow into something bigger, something more.”

“Well...I’m certainly becoming something bigger.” Jessica patted her bump. “The thought of bread and butter pickles and pistachio ice cream should make me want to puke, but right now, that’s _all I want_.” 

The two of them stared at each other for a moment and then both of them cracked up in laughter. Emma risked putting a hand on her shoulder. She’d never had a sister. Not in all those years in Iowa, California, at Mason Industries, and certainly not in that cabin. Somehow it felt comforting to think maybe she did now. “Look. You don’t need Wyatt. I didn’t need Nicholas. We’re stronger than either of those two brains-in-their-dicks ever could be. Your baby, my baby--we’re gonna raise them together, in a better world than the one either one of them ever could have built.” She nodded towards the window, looking out over the yard and the old white Chevy four-by-four pickup parked in the drive. “So what do you say we go to the Hy-Vee, get your damn pickles and ice cream? Just keep ‘em away from me, because it probably _will_ make me puke.”

~~~~~~~~~~

Jessica opened the freezer case, looking at the Häagen-Dazs selection, enjoying the sensation of the cool air trickling out past her, flowing over the tank top sticking to her with sweat. God, Kansas in July. She’d grown up in the parched terrain of west Texas, true, hot and bone dry. But then San Francisco was so mild, and it wasn’t the heat here, given El Cruce could get scorcher near a hundred degrees easy. It was the _humidity_ that killed her, and with her hormones raging out of control as they were, that made it even more miserable. Her internal thermostat was out of whack even before air so moist it felt like she should be able to reach out, clench her fingers, and wring it out came into the picture.

Could be worse. They could have gone to New Orleans. Or Florida. Kansas wasn’t so bad. The fields of wheat and corn and soybeans were different to her, but the flat expanse of prairie was comfortingly familiar to her. Emma too, it seemed. She slipped back into this life like she’d never left, but she had. She’d become something much bigger than some Iowa farm girl, and Jessica envied that, felt like she could never measure up to that level of smarts and bravado.

All her life she’d been waiting for Rittenhouse to give her the chance to be somebody. In the meantime, she’d wanted to grow up, then to marry Wyatt, then to have kids. She gotten scared she’d gotten pregnant once, shortly after their first time, and she hadn’t been forced to make a decision because either she miscarried or her period just came late before she could tell her mom, and she was so grateful. Because they both were sixteen with Wyatt living on other people’s couches or in their guest rooms, people who’d help shelter him from foster care until he finally turned eighteen. She didn’t know much, but she knew they’d never get _anywhere_ with a baby and no diplomas. 

She’d never told him. He’d have tried to convince her they’d make it work. He’d keep working at Kenny’s, she could pick up more waitress shifts. She couldn’t tell him, couldn’t have shaped the words _I want to be more than another generation of Texas trailer trash with no chances, Wyatt. We have a baby now, neither of us will ever get anywhere._

After he went into the Army, they’d never gotten around to having those kids. Would have helped if he was home at all. These past couple of years, she’d started to figure hitting that moving target with her biological clock going tick-tock was less likely anyway, and it didn’t help that she and Wyatt were at that point screwing other people to give each other the middle finger, and every time he came home it was either stony silence or a screaming fight. The last two years, since October of 2016, he’d shut her out completely, not talking about the missions he apparently went on stateside because he was back home constantly, but told her nothing. 

She understood why now. His big fat Mason Industries time travel secret. Ha. She’d been keeping that one from him since she was not quite four years old, and a red-haired lady secretly showed her the spaceship when they came to save Kevin, let a curious young Jessica climb inside and sit on a seat. She’d told Wyatt about that when they were still little kids but he hadn’t believed her, told her she was making up stories, and obviously they’d both been so young that he’d long since forgotten about it by the time Denise Christopher summoned him to that mission. Then she was eighteen and missing Wyatt away at Basic, and Carol Preston had always been so good to her and her family all through her childhood, keeping the bills afloat, and that was the time Carol came to El Cruce and reminded her about that spaceship Jessica thought she’d imagined or dreamed, told her about time travel, and told her that one day, her place in Rittenhouse just might be to do that.

Right now she wished she was in El Cruce with her parents. Or at least in Dallas with Kev and Diana. Somewhere, someone, safe and familiar, who loved her. Living the life of an Army wife since she was eighteen, and she’d gotten dragged to and fro for years, living in impersonal Army base housing, until they finally dug up enough money to settle in San Francisco, near his latest base. Was it any damn wonder she’d ended up a bartender? It wasn’t like she’d had the money to go to school for anything else, while Wyatt had gone off and gotten a PoliSci degree on the government’s dime that he didn’t even use. Felt like he did it just for a lark to prove he could, and if she’d had that chance to go to school, to be more--and Rittenhouse had put Darla through school, and maybe they would have with her, but she’d insisted that she wanted Wyatt, wanted to be there for him, and so she lost her chance. Now she was thirty-five, four months pregnant, and on the run from government agents to boot. El Cruce and Dallas weren’t options anymore. All she had was Manhattan frickin’ Kansas.

“Hey, are you gonna…” She snapped out of it and looked aside to see a woman of about her own age gesturing towards the still-open freezer. 

“Oh, yeah.” She smiled guiltily, snagging a pint of pistachio, thinking better of it and grabbing a second one, and then stepping aside. “Sorry.”

She’d hoped. Told herself maybe this time it would be real, and if it had been--would she have told Wyatt, told him that they both should escape from the ever-tightening noose of that stupid time machine? Become some modern day Bonnie and Clyde, hiding from both Rittenhouse and the government. Wasn’t that hard to live off the grid if someone really wanted it. When he’d begged her for another chance, refused to take the divorce papers, brought her into his weird secret life down in that bunker, she’d wanted so desperately to believe.

Maybe this Wyatt was different. Maybe he wasn’t the man who refused to talk, who glowered and started fights if another man smiled at her, who’d cheated on her after he’d left her on a dark roadside in 2012 because Rory Kurtz, her first love from El Cruce, walked into the Pelican bar and she’d smiled a little too much, laughed a little too loudly, while pulling his beers, and talking about the old days. She’d thumbed a ride back to their apartment, scared the whole way that she was riding with a serial killer. Apparently, in that other Wyatt’s timeline, a serial killer really had found her. He didn’t come home until the next morning, smelling of sex and beer and cheap perfume. Found some woman because he was drunk and angry and she’d do.

She’d gone out and cheated on him too, though she hadn’t really wanted the guy, but she’d needed to strike back at him in some way. Wyatt would cheat with some meaningless ditz, she’d cheat with men she deliberately would refuse to know names and details so he couldn’t go beat the shit out of them. That was how it went between them for a couple of years, until they both got tired of it and gave up.

She’d wanted to believe in him. But there he was, sleeping with her, passionate and tender and loving, and ten minutes later he’d be hovering all over Lucy, smiling at her, scowling darkly whenever she went and talked to Flynn. She knew Wyatt’s tells all too well.

_”Lucy and me? That’s over, Jess.” He shook his head, giving her a smile as if to say how silly she was to even worry. “We were together only one night. And...you were dead. I’m not...I swear I’m not him. The guy who cheated on you.”_

_She smiled and said, “Yeah, of course. I feel bad, you know? This can’t be easy for her.” **It’s over? Then stop acting like you think you have some claim. Stop hovering over her like a helicopter, and looking like you want to beat the shit out of another man for just talking to her.** Anyone could see the two of them were only talking, though she’d catch a flicker of something in Flynn’s expression occasionally, some kind of puppyish admiration. She’d seen enough men with hopeless crushes go through her bar over the years. Men who looked down at their beers and mumbled about how they’d never, ever even dream to have anything with a woman so out of their league. Bartending was the next best thing to being a priest or a shrink for hearing confessions and figuring out human emotions. Flynn idolized Lucy for some reason, but that was safer than actually loving her. No, he’d never do anything about it._

_Lucy never made a move towards Wyatt, kept her distance, but the look in her eyes sometimes told Jessica that she hadn’t stuffed her own feelings neatly away again either. It didn’t matter they weren’t sleeping together. Wyatt’s jealousy said more than enough. For him, it wasn’t over._

He’d cheated on her before, but this one hurt the most, because he’d never loved any of the others. While he was smiling and telling her he loved her, how glad he was to get this second chance, he was keeping Lucy all lined up on the side. Lying to her, maybe lying to himself, and she was so tired of it. Tired of not being able to trust him, confide in him, believe in him. Tired of sacrificing and staying silent so he wouldn’t be bothered.

He’d taken her for granted, again. At least Rittenhouse offered her a chance to be something more. Emma especially now, talking excitedly about a new plan, a new world, and clearly offering her a chance to stand side by side as partners in this. To do something that mattered. To have someone who believed in her. Wasn’t that a better life for her? A better life for this baby too, than a father who kept running off to chase through time, and whose eyes and heart kept straying to another woman?

She’d almost wavered in Chinatown, with him pleading with her when he cornered her. Though him asking if he was the father helped her sieve through the ashes of her resolve, crumbling as it always did whenever he could be so passionate, so earnest, and find a nugget of cold clarity. _How dare you even ask, when you’re the one practically eye-fucking another woman in front of me? Who else do you think I was screwing in that bunker, Wyatt, without you knowing? Flynn? Maybe me and Lucy holding some kinky threesome with a tall, dark, and good-looking European killing machine in the showers while you were still sleeping?_

Insisted he and the baby were her family, as if expecting that alone should be enough to make her turn away from Rittenhouse, from everything she’d done already, and cry on his shoulder. But this time--this time, two minutes of Wyatt trying to be sincere wasn’t enough. And so she turned and slipped away.

She couldn’t go back to El Cruce. She couldn’t go to Dallas. And whatever she’d had with Wyatt--she’d burned that to cinders when she kidnapped Jiya, when she shot at Wyatt and his allies in the saloon. She still shuddered, remembering Flynn’s cold hooded gaze staring at her, pinning her in place on those stairs, a cold shiver going down her back as she realized how stupid she’d been to put herself out in the open like this, waiting for the bullet between her eyes or through her heart. The fact it only clipped her upper arm seemed like a miracle, but she knew full well how good a shot someone had to be in covert ops under pressure. Had he been toying with her, like a cat with a bird? Trying to bring her down alive, probably. Wyatt’s orders and all.

No, she couldn’t go back. Jiya, if nobody else, would probably insist on seeing her dead. It hadn’t been personal. She’d liked Jiya, let herself start to foolishly hope during all those episodes of Vanderpump Rules that maybe this was something real, something of her own. But orders were orders, and she owed Rittenhouse everything for Kevin’s life. They’d made it clear it was time for her to pay her debt. And now Emma stepped in to say she’d done it, she’d passed her initiation, and the world was hers for the taking. What else did she have? Being a pregnant bartender with nobody and nothing, if she ran away from it all. A jail cell or a bullet, if she went back to Christopher’s team. 

Rittenhouse was all that was left. So the only way now was forward. At least she and her baby wouldn’t be alone. Emma being pregnant too surprised her, but maybe that was some kind of weird sign.

Finding Emma in the produce section, eyeing the oranges with a strange sense of wonder--she probably hadn’t seen them for years in the 1880’s--Jessica dropped the ice cream in her basket. “Gotta get the pickles next,” she said.

“Eat up, ‘cause we’re going on a mission soon,” Emma said decisively.

“Where?” She leaned in close, lowered her voice so that Nanny McBiddy with her blue hair checking over every single banana wouldn’t hear.

“Vegas, ‘62. I want that plutonium battery back.” They’d lost it when Darla apparently changed the timeline by messing with Flynn’s past, bringing back his wife. “I didn’t fully expect that little consequence. Couldn’t map out every possibility, you know? But clearly he didn’t steal that battery in this timeline, and that’s an advantage we can use.”

“From what you’re saying, it sounds like a lot of things he did before he didn’t this time around. Because he didn’t get married and have a kid.” They were flying blind compared to previously, as Jessica understood it, when RIttenhouse had eyes and ears in pretty much every government agency. 

“Because he didn’t stick his nose where it didn’t belong,” Emma corrected her. “Yeah, John Wilkes Booth assassinated Lincoln, I’m assuming we blew up the Hindenburg, and so on. And I’m guessing our Croatian wonderboy is possibly squeaky clean in this timeline now.” She laughed, delighted. “Total absolution as a freebie? That’ll put his nose even more out of joint.”

She didn’t have much to say to that. Whatever personal business Flynn and Emma had between them, how Emma seemed gleefully determined to hound the man, Jessica considered that none of hers. “The two of you--”

“What, are you asking if the kid could actually be Flynn’s? Him and me sneaking off on-mission for some hate-sex quickie?” She laughed again. “Maybe in 1919, while we stuffed Rufus in the closet. No, Flynn’s pretty clear that he kill me. For me? I go after him because he’s our biggest threat, because we’ve dealt hard hits to all the others already,” Emma told her. She chewed her lip. “Better we kept our memories, Jess, but that Baltimore mission’s had more ripples than even I expected. I had to have been Rittenhouse’s pilot--Anthony died back in 2016, and I was kidnapped, so obviously I was back from the 1880’s by then, but beyond that, a lot we don’t know.” 

“Carol probably would have known.”

Emma slanted her an amused look. “You think she’d dare to share the details with the lowly help? And Darla, Matt, and the rest weren’t close enough to the Mothership to know.” Jessica hadn’t been either, at that. But now she was. 

“Benjamin Cahill might? I--didn’t get too close to him, but I’d expect he’d have to be deeply involved with the venture at Mason Industries, even in this timeline.” 

A thoughtful look crossed Emma’s features. “Good call. Maybe that merits a visit up to dear old Benny Cahill, though…get what he knows. If anyone alive knows how it went down, it’d be him, given how he wormed his way into standing elbow-to-elbow with both the NSA and Mason Industries. I doubt that much has changed.” 

Jessica tried to think ahead on that. “Well, maybe that’s worth a trip to whatever federal prison they’ve got him rotting in, if we can get there. Or at least trying to get someone on the inside to get that info from him.”

Emma’s smile of approval at that felt good, and something within Jessica eased slightly. “We’ll see. Until then, Vegas. Flynn told me roughly how he did it, so we’ve got a roadmap. And since you, Darla, Matt, and I weren’t there when Flynn and Anthony went, we can go. And Flynn, Lucy, and Wyatt can’t because they'll think they were there the first time, and I doubt they've compared notes with anyone on how the timeline's changed. Not when they're probably busy trying to avoid the whole Flynn issue, period." She grinned, expression fox-like which was only accentuated by her red hair and freckles. “So unless Jiya and some random twits Christopher pulls off the street are gonna come stop us,” she plunked the oranges still clutched in her hands down into the basket, “they'll think they're stuck watching us waltz in. Easy pickings. Now let’s go get those pickles already and get out of here, huh?”


	9. 3x03: Children of the Dragon (Wyatt: Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, July 2018)

The tension in the farmhouse felt thick enough to blast apart with a brick of C4 now that the others had been back for a week from the 1861 mission to apparently rescue Lincoln. Lucy babbling excitedly about meeting another idol of hers, Kate Warne, and he’d missed that, like he’d missed the sheer fun they’d apparently had saving Robert Johnson in the spring. And of course Flynn got a do-over on the whole Lincoln thing. Much as he’d admit that trying to insist the man was a Rittenhouse mole probably had sounded crazy, and maybe he’d gone a little too far on that, it felt somehow Flynn just kept getting handed second chances left and right this year. _Hey, universe, if you’re dealing out the second chances, help a man out, would you?_

Nothing had changed, though. Nobody had said anything about his blowup in the barn, Denise hadn’t said anything about him being on or off the next mission, and in general, that barrier between him and them stood. It felt like he’d been frozen out, standing there in the Siberian chill, watching them all go about their lives behind a wall of ice, able to see and hear, but kept apart.

 _What do you want from me?_ Were they waiting for--what? Him to say fuck all this, and quit? Yeah, cool, maybe Jiya and Lucy could walk away, but Flynn would have been back in prison if he wasn’t useful, was apparently Mister Federal Agent now, and Wyatt was on military assignment seconded to DHS. Neither of them got the luxury of quitting. He walked away, that was going AWOL. Escaping the bunker for a few hours to go see Jessica--that was different. They had to have known he’d come back. He walked away now for good, he’d have committed desertion. 

Sitting at the breakfast table, physically there with them but not truly a part of the whole, them talking around him like he wasn’t even there, he finally gave up. His future self hadn't said much, but told him _Man, you'd better hustle and fix this, or else_ , with a meaningful look. What exactly he'd meant, whether it was personal failure or mission failure or what, Wyatt didn't know, but in the end, he didn't need to say. The judgmental look and sharp words were enough to say he'd screwed up big time, and it came with a heavy cost. “You know, this is...can you just make up your minds, OK? Either you kick me out and Denise gets me reassigned somewhere else, fine, or else you’ve gotta let me back on mission.”

Flynn raised an eyebrow, taking a spoonful of Lucky Charms. Lucy shot him a look of sympathy, but shoved her toast and strawberry jelly in her mouth, reaching for her coffee. Flynn handed Jiya the Lucky Charms box, and she seemed incredibly interested in pouring the cereal into her bowl. Connor hadn’t come in yet, hard at work on the Lifeboat, morning owl that he was. Denise was upstairs still talking to Michelle, but he had the sense she’d have been sitting there not saying anything either. 

The sound of the news on TV out in the living room, the tiny waterfall _tink-tink-tink_ of cereal pieces hitting the ceramic of the bowl, and Lucy’s faint cough as the coffee was obviously still too hot were the only noises, and he felt like he could scream into the void. “See, this is what I’m talking about. Just...yell at me or whatever. Beat me up if that’s what makes you feel better, sure. But I can’t keep doing this silent treatment thing for months. Either you get over it, or you don’t.”

“So...‘get over it’?’ Jiya said, shaping the words slowly, pouring the milk on her cereal.

“To be fair, he’s very much military,” Flynn commented, sitting back in his chair. “You academic and scientific nerds,” he gestured to Lucy and Jiya with his spoon, “me as independent covert ops, we’re used to discussions. He’s used to reprimands. Clear orders, clear consequences.”

Having Flynn defend him, even that mildly, somehow felt fit to choke him. “‘Independent covert ops’ is such a nicer way of saying ‘mercenary’, isn’t it?”

Flynn gave an amused bark of laughter at that. Condescending prick. “Clearly you’re not in the business for the money, _seronja_ , when you’re mostly fighting for people oppressed by their governments. Up till I started the firm and got the NSA contracts, I considered myself lucky to be fed, kept in ammo, and have somewhere dry to sleep.”

“So you’re a volunteer hitman. All heart. Got it.” He shook his head. Cute with him pulling out the foreign insult, but he didn’t need to know what meant exactly to get the gist. Besides, two could play at that game. Staring at Flynn casually spooning up more cereal, he muttered, “ _’Ayri feek, ya ibn al sharmouta_.”

Flynn returned immediately, in annoying fluent Arabic, “If you’re going to try and be clever with foreign languages, better keep in mind when someone also served for years in the Middle East too before insulting their mother, _al’abalah_. Or that someone else’s heritage is Lebanese and she’s sitting at the table too. Also, thanks for the offer, but,” he gave that appraising look that once again pinged Wyatt’s suspicions that no, the man wasn’t entirely straight, “you’re definitely not my type.”

“Oh, I think we know who you--”

Jiya slammed a hand down on the table. “Enough already. You’re right, we can’t keep doing this for months, so let’s have done with it.” She looked at Wyatt, eyes blazing. She spoke in the different dialect of Levantine Arabic, but he followed it easily enough. She switched back to English, gesturing towards Lucy as if to say _Let’s not cut her out of the conversation here._ “I’m so tired of you and your own comfort being the only thing that matters, Wyatt. How about you stop acting like you’re the one who’s been wronged, huh?”

“What do you want from me?” he protested. “I mean, you think wherever Rufus is, he’s happy that we’re like this right now? That this is what he wanted?”

“No.” Jiya’s voice rose, and both hands on the table now, she half-rose from her chair, until he had the sense she wanted to scream but barely kept it in check. “No, no, no, no, you don’t get to do that. You know what Rufus would have wanted, Wyatt? He wanted to _not die_.” She took in a deep breath, and he saw her hands clenched, white-knuckled. “How about an apology? How about you actually commit to being better? How about you stop making excuses about how you didn’t mean it, like that actually means anything? We all _know_ that, Wyatt, but it doesn’t _matter_! It still happened. It still happened, and Jessica kidnapped me, and Rufus is still dead, because you only worried about you, and didn’t care about any of us for months before it happened. Whether you meant it or not really doesn’t count. It only matters that it happened, and you helped make it happen.” She threw out a hand towards Flynn, indicating him. “You keep taking potshots at him, because you need someone else to be the villain here. Great. I get it. But that door’s shut, Wyatt. Not gonna work anymore. At least he’s sorry, he’ll admit his reasons for the things he did aren’t excuses, he doesn’t expect us to get over it like it was nothing, and he’s shown us he’s willing to put in the work to be better. You’re not, Wyatt. You just want us to tell you we understand, that it’s OK that you screwed up, and make you feel better.”

He sat there, feeling oddly like he’d been shot, the buzz of adrenaline coursing through him and keeping him going. But any second now the pain would hit, and the shock, and the fear that he wouldn’t survive this. Jiya’s fury hit with the force of an avalanche, and something in his stomach lurched, throat tightening. What could he say to that? What could he offer up that would make it right? She’d embraced Flynn too, looked like. What place did he have here anymore? The asshole they didn’t want, the superfluous soldier. _No making up for this, is there?_ He looked at Lucy, seeing the look on her face. She looked like she wanted to come to him, but she obviously was taking Jiya’s side on this. So maybe it was only fair Jiya get to speak up, because of her kidnapping, because of Rufus. At least Flynn kept his mouth shut, because screw his opinion. “Then...OK. I’ll go. I’ll ask Denise to--”

“You’re not getting it,” Jiya said, shaking her head, looking at him with a mix of exasperation and something that might have almost been sympathy. “That’s running away, and burning everything to the ground. That’s not what I, no--” she amended, nodding to the other two,”we’re after.”

“So what do you _want_ from me?” he said, feeling like he was about to come apart, unable to make sense of it. “Just tell me and I’ll do it!”

“I can’t even--” Jiya sighed, sitting back down in her chair. “I just…” Head in her hands, he couldn’t help the miserable feeling that he’d failed some test that he hadn’t even realized, and had no notion of how to make it right. _Be better._ He was trying, wasn’t he? But how could he show that when they wouldn’t even let him back on a mission, give him a chance to show that he still had their backs?

“If it’s all right by you two, I’ll go get the car keys,” Flynn said into the seemingly endless silence. Lucy looked at him and nodded. Jiya just waved a hand in vague acknowledgment.

Wyatt almost snapped, _So you’re finally butting out, good, your opinion isn’t needed here,_ but held his tongue. When Flynn came back downstairs, keys in hand, looking at Wyatt expectantly, the other shoe dropped. “You want me to take a drive with you? Are you kidding?” Like he’d trust the man as far as he could throw him.

Flynn crossed his arms over his chest, giving a dramatic roll of his eyes. “Oh, come on. Be reasonable. I’m not going to shoot you, and bury you in the woods. I come back without you, they’re both more than smart enough to know that I did it.”

Jiya, spooning up Lucky Charms again finally, paused with the spoon over her bowl and glanced towards Flynn. “Garcia. Seriously. I told you--quit the teammate murder jokes.”

“Sorry,” he replied, shooting her a sheepish smile. Oh, great, he was _Garcia_ now for Jiya too, and that told Wyatt plenty. Shit. It was one thing when it was Lucy and she was sleeping with him, but he’d won over Jiya, after almost killing Rufus himself, and that said a lot about how he’d wormed his way in. 

“Wyatt,” Lucy finally spoke up, “trust me, we don’t want you to leave. But it’s best if you agree to this. Go with Garcia. Start...start fixing things between you two first. Because being around it is getting exhausting. We have bigger problems, and we need to be a team again.”

 _I’m the problem? We were fine until he got here. We were a team._ Now he got it. They wanted him to make nice with their new best pal Flynn. Lucy wanted...what? His blessing on her being with Flynn? Yeah, OK, sure, fine, he’d work on that and shut his mouth, if that was what it took. At least until Flynn showed his true colors, and let her down. “Great.” He stood from his chair too quickly, to the point it banged back onto the kitchen floor. He made sure to push it in carefully, letting them see it was cool, he was in control of himself. “Life changing road trip it is.” 

Heading out to the Civic, he debating asking for the keys, but held back. Fine. Great. Flynn calling the shots. Could this get worse? The last time he’d been alone with the guy, other than briefly in passing in the bunker bathroom to wash up and shave, it was the Watergate mission and he'd been threatening to kill Wyatt.

Flynn said nothing as he turned his head to back down the driveway. Nothing as they drove through downtown Gettysburg, much quieter now that the battle’s anniversary had come and gone again, though the usual summer tourism still kept things humming along. Wyatt finally lost patience as Flynn hummed along to Pat Benatar as they hit the Maryland state line, drove past a tchotchke shop next door to an ice cream parlor. “Please. Waiting me out hoping I’ll break? Really?”

Quitting the humming, Flynn half-grimaced. “This isn’t an interrogation, you know.”

“Great. You wanted to talk, so start talking.” 

Flynn pulled into a parking lot of a liquor store, signs in the windows advertising everything from Corona to Crown Royal. “Great. If we’re talking, this needs a beer.” He shrugged diffidently. “And good news, in Maryland you can buy a six pack easily.” As they’d found out from Denise, Pennsylvania apparently wanted people to buy the whole damn case. Hand still on his door as he moved to close it, he leaned down. “You coming in or not? I promise I’m buying something ridiculous if you don’t have an opinion. Mango-lime Bud Light or whatever.”

“Jesus,” Wyatt muttered, undoing his seatbelt, rubbing his temples, but following Flynn anyway. “We could have just gone to a bar.”

“Well, I believe there’re some time-honored Texan traditions. Including buying a six-pack somewhere, parking in the middle of nowhere, and shooting the wind.” He grimaced, sighing as if impatient with himself. “Shooting the breeze,” he corrected himself.

Wyatt hated to admit he was right, but yeah, he was. “Your mom was from Houston. She left.”

The bell dinged as Flynn pushed the door open, and Wyatt gratefully walked into the air conditioning. He could handle the heat, but in his opinion, humidity completely sucked ass. “My grandparents and cousins were still there. So we went to Sugar Land most every summer, sometimes went down to Galveston. Sometimes came at Christmas too.” He shook his head. “Mom wanted me to have that big American Christmas. Tito--Josip Broz--when I was a kid, his influence meant anything overtly religious was frowned upon in Yugoslavia because it highlighted the differences. Took a while to change even after. Tito, he got the country the hell away from Stalin’s ideals, but...what he turned things into himself...” He headed back towards the beer cooler. “Yugoslavia could never hold, you know? America’s the oddball. The roots go so deep elsewhere. _E pluribus unum_ doesn’t easily apply when yours is a country of dozens of ethnicities and different major religions, born at the stroke of a pen by a postwar treaty in another country rather than created by its own people. Yugoslavia, Czechoslovokia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and really, most of the Middle East--all of them were the Treaty of Versailles’ children. And so they’ve all failed to hold together in the end.”

He wasn’t a history nerd like Lucy, so a lot of that was admittedly lost on him. But some he’d seen firsthand. Tribalism, the conflict of dozens of ethnic, religious, and cultural identities all crammed together in something supposedly a single nation, and told to play nice, had helped drive the engine of Middle Eastern conflict. Cost so many lives, caused so much pain. “Interesting. Thanks for the cultural lesson.”

Flynn sighed heavily, pointing at the row of coolers. “Just pick something. Anyway, tell me, didn’t you go and driving, parking, and drinking a beer out El Paso way?”

“Yeah, we did. Though it’s about as far from Houston as you can get and still be in Texas.” Seven hundred miles or so, as the crow flew. Somehow it seemed appropriate to him if Flynn was trying to play the _good ol’ Texas boy_ angle here to try to find some common ground that they came from opposite sides of the state. He pulled open one of the cooler doors and grabbed a six pack. “We also didn’t do it in a shitty Civic.”

“Yeah, well, Denise wasn’t going to loan us either a Mustang or a pickup truck just for the accuracy factor,” Flynn quipped. “She’ll save that for Lifeboat trips.”

Wyatt rolled his eyes, but caught himself smiling a little in spite of himself. “Fine. Lone Star seems appropriate.” Flynn paid, and they hit the road again. Something in Wyatt eased a little at knowing it wasn’t some weird silent treatment in hopes of getting him babbling. Though he side-eyed Flynn’s obvious attempt to get him talking by trying to appeal to them having some kind of common ground. So he went on the offensive. “The last time you tried to tell me all about how alike we are, you had me handcuffed to a chair.”

“And look how far we’ve come since then,” Flynn quipped breezily in return. “I will say--my compliments. Nice trick with picking the lock on the handcuffs. I’ll have to get you to teach me that one.”

“What, no call for lockpicking in your line of work?”

“No, as you’re usually either blowing the door up, or bluffing your way in.” Sitting at a red light as they were, Flynn slanted a look his way. “Didn’t think there was much call for it in Special Forces either.”

“There’s not. I learned it when I was a teenager.”

“Hobby-slash-Houdini idolization, or were you jacking cars? I’d guess the latter, given your hotwiring talents.”

Wyatt didn’t answer that, because a few times, it definitely had been the latter. Though he’d learned it mostly because it felt somehow rebellious, dangerous, edgy. “Heard from Lucy that Houdini got you in cuffs.”

“He did. Clearly I escaped eventually, given I’m not in an 1893 jail.” Flynn looked totally unruffled, pulling the car into what looked like a small park, a couple of picnic tables near the riverside. “This will have to do for middle of nowhere.” 

“Drinking with you at,” he checked his watch, “10 AM on a weekday. Wow. My life really has gone to shit.”

Flynn smirked. “Don’t worry. We’re just sitting causing no trouble. Cops shouldn’t care, and if they do, I’m a federal agent meeting with an informant.”

Sitting at the picnic table, he noticed the etching in the brown paint of a heart and initial, wondered who T and R were. Probably two dumb kids hopelessly in love. He and Jess had carved their initials in a cottonwood tree back in El Cruce. With their apparent luck, the thing probably got struck by lightning, long gone and burned up in someone’s smoker or fireplace. Popping open the beer, he took a sip. “So looks we’ve been ordered to make a peace treaty.”

“Then by all means,” Flynn said dryly, grabbing his own beer, “state your grievances.”

Cards on the table finally. Good. “Great. You’re a terrorist psycho who would have killed anyone who stood in your way to get what you wanted. This year, you walk in, totally fuck up our team’s dynamic, and I think you actually enjoyed that. And you keep fucking with Lucy’s head and acting like you’re her best friend and some good guy when we both know you aren’t, and you have absolutely no right to start something with her when you’re that kind of person.”

“Fine, you get that. I get to tell you that I think you’re a raging asshole for expecting her to make her life still revolve around you when you clearly told her you were choosing your wife, and trying to manipulate her constantly. Because it’s not me. I’m convenient. She could have been having friendly conversations with Connor or any other man, and you’d have been pissed.” Flynn leaned in. “You slept with her and you feel like she owes you something still. She doesn’t. She keeps telling you that you two are done. Get over it.”

“We’re done when--” If he lost Lucy after losing Jessica, he couldn’t take it.

“When she says you’re done? Hasn’t she said it, over and over, and you just refuse to listen? Or did you mean you and Lucy are done when you say you’re done?” Flynn laughed, shaking his head. “Ah, that’s your dad talking, isn’t it?”

Something within him went very still, his danger sense suddenly sounding like a warning klaxon. “What exactly do you mean by that?”

Flynn looked over the table at him, eyes intense, and Wyatt had the odd feeling that this had turned into an interrogation in that moment, beer and bluster or not. “I think you went into survival mode as a child. You were that scared little boy sitting in his room, playing with his toys, and listening to Mommy and Daddy argue. Wanting to stand up to him to protect her, but also wanting him to love you. Hating hearing him hit her but also praying you wouldn’t hear his footsteps coming to your room next.”

His stomach lurched again, and he almost had to grab the edge of the table to hold himself steady. “How can you--some fucking NSA file, or...or...Lucy?” He had to turn away from the too-vivid image of the two of them in bed together, discussing him and his secrets as some kind of sick pillow talk. He’d never expected Lucy to backstab him that utterly. “What, did she write it in that stupid journal of hers you were going on about?”

“Lucy didn’t tell me a damn thing,” Flynn said, eyebrows furrowed. “Didn’t have to. See, this is what I’m talking about. Can’t have been you. Can’t have been that you’re so obvious that you reek of it. Of course it had to be someone else, someone _betraying_ you.” Hands on the tabletop, he looked at Wyatt, head cocked slightly aside, as if somehow entreating him. “Wyatt, you dumb shit,” he said, sighing lowly. “This is the end of the line. I know you realize that given you’re offering to leave. Me? I had six months in a prison cell to think a lot of things over. Realize how much I’d screwed up, how I’d never be able to fix it. I had no way out, until I did. You’re not there yet, but you could still lose everything. They want to forgive you. They want to be your friends. But you are making that _Goddamn impossible_ for them.” 

He sat there, silent, feeling stunned still. Left flatfooted again by this Flynn, his voice oddly soft and matter-of-fact, all traces of his usual dramatics and sarcasm gone. He swallowed hard, hating himself so much that he’d gotten to this point, that here he was sitting with a man he loathed who actually clearly pitied him. Thought of him wiping away the blood from his mouth, and looking at Wyatt with such casual contempt. _You poor broken bastard. That’s the only language you know how to use, isn’t it?_ No handcuff trick this time to escape. Lucy and Jiya had knowingly put Wyatt’s fate in this man’s hands, and he was so exhausted and confused.

“So just tell me what I need to do,” he said tiredly, reaching for the beer again. “Because I really do not have a fucking clue, OK.”

Flynn gave another of those long sighs again. “I told them. You’re a soldier. You need it laid out clearly.”

“Be easier that way.”

“Clear it is. You realize you can’t punch or stonewall your way out of this? That if we go back and I have to tell them you turned this into a brawl or you just refused to talk, you’re done?”

The lump in his throat felt like it grew even more, hardened further. “Yeah.” _Surrender_. It galled him, terrified him, but there was nothing here he could fight. Nothing to do but sit there and take it, exactly like when he was a kid, and hope in the end he would be OK. Better to just give in. Accept whatever lecture or beating he had coming and go with it.

Flynn looked away from him, towards the steady stream of the river, and Wyatt’s eyes followed. Watching the hypnotic flow, tripping over the stones on its merry way somewhere, untroubled by the woes of anyone and everyone. “You want to know how I know your dad went at you? I was a strangely clumsy boy,” he said, tone too even, dead flat. Wyatt couldn’t help but look at him, startled, but Flynn kept his gaze on the river. “Always seemed to fall while playing soccer or playing in the yard. At one point the doctor warned my parents that if I broke my left forearm again in the next few years they’d probably have to pin it together.” He smiled without any humor, pushed up his left t-shirt sleeve, and tapped a scar there about six inches above his elbow. “Dad was teaching me woodworking, and a chisel...slipped. Very unfortunate.” Now he glanced back up at Wyatt, eyes bright and intense. “My _tata_ , he liked vodka and a leather belt.”

Right then, something within Wyatt was at war. Another attempt by Flynn to claim they were alike, and he really should just tell him to fuck off with something that transparent. But...but being _seen_ , not having to explain why he was such a mess, maybe that was worth giving even Flynn a tentative truce. Someone who’d been there knew what it was like, and he’d run into a couple of them before in the Army, and it helped. He had to try. Because there was nothing else left to him. If Flynn was lying--God. He’d take it from the man’s hide later, but something about it seemed too real. “My dad liked cheap bourbon.” He inhaled, breath shuddering. “And yeah, the belt. He had this big silver buckle…Texan, right?” he said, chuckling without humor.

“We’d go to the woodshed. I used to almost throw up when I’d hear him pulling that belt through the belt loops.” Flynn took a hefty drink from his beer bottle. “Told me if I made any noise I’d regret it, because no son of his would grow up to be a sissy.”

God, that sounded so familiar. The beer seemed like a good idea, so he drank deeply, coughed, sputtered, took another sip. “He used to order me outside.” That knowledge it was coming, the forced march, had been part of the punishment. The sheer terrified anticipation of it had made him throw up a few times. “Not enough room in a trailer to properly swing. We had a corner lot, so the neighbors couldn’t see anything if we went behind the kitchen. Told me if the neighbors heard me I’d get it twice as bad, and men needed to be tough, so I’d better not cry.” 

Another of those humorless half-laughs from Flynn. “Well, well. Another thing that transcends nations, languages, and borders.”

“Yeah, but,” taking another drink, “I wouldn’t recommend child abuse to the UN as a new tactic to bring the international community together.” Glanced over at Flynn and for a moment their eyes met, and then it was stupid and crazy and a terrible joke, but they were laughing anyway. Laughing in that way that only those who’d been through a thing and could appreciate the bleak gallows humor of a survivor ever could. The same way he could joke with other veterans about screwed up shit they’d seen and done. That--that alone told him Flynn wasn’t lying.

The trick here, he decided, would be to imagine something else. He’d been doing that for a long time, seemed like, to get through. Imagined being out on the sports field at school to help get through Basic, when the drill sergeants screaming at him, getting in his face, telling him he was a maggot-filled piece of shit, he was nothing, sent a cold wave of panic down his spine. For the first two weeks he had the impulse to either run or punch them. That worked until he got his barriers in place and could stand there without a flicker and think, _Yeah, I’ll show you. You think this will break me, pal? You’re just playing. I’ve seen the real thing._ Imagined Jessica in the face of so many women; though unlike this timeline’s Wyatt--or was it the previous timeline’s Wyatt now that Emma had messed with this one further? It made his head hurt trying to make sense of exactly where one timeline got off the train, and another stepped on.

He’d only slept with another woman a few times during their marriage. Overseas, when the shit got really bad, and the alcohol flowed too liberally, to the point everything blurred. Once-offs, never the same person, and all along he’d really imagined Jess there with him, loving him, making it all somehow bearable. He couldn’t tell her that, though. All she’d hear was _cheating scum_.

He’d never once imagined Lucy this year while in bed with Jess. He could say that without any lie or hesitation, because he wanted Jess, he loved Jess, he didn’t need to pine for someone else to make sparks fly between them. Lucy, though--she crept in sometimes when he wasn’t looking, out on mission when she’d do something and he’d see how beautiful and fun she was. Remember what it had been like that night in Hollywood. But now she’d picked frickin’ Flynn, and--maybe they weren’t wrong about Jess. 

No, the only way to get through this would be to pretend. Make nice with Flynn. But not the sociopathic terrorist who’d tried to kill them on multiple occasions and swept in like he owned the place. Wyatt had to have some pride and standards. But there was another guy he could imagine. This guy knew Houston because he had family there, knew about a park ’n’ drink, knew what it was like to love and hate and fear your own father, knew the war in the Middle East enough to speak Arabic and to not need to talk about things. A man who’d had a wife and daughter, despite it all. Someone where, if they’d met over in Mosul, maybe they could have been friendly enough. If he could split Flynn into two people, pretend that other part away, at least for now, maybe that would get him through. It wasn’t like the rest of them weren’t ignoring the elephant in the room either.

He finished his beer and reached for another one. “I’m not driving, it’s fine,” he said defensively.

“You probably need it,” Flynn returned.

Taking another sip of Lone Star, he launched right in. “You’re walking away from your wife and your kid.”

Flynn sighed, reached for his own beer, took another sip. “Clearly we’re gonna be here a while.” Wyatt waited while he took another drink. “My w--Lorena is happy. She’s had a husband she’d loved for over twenty years. Good life. Loves her kids. Iris…” He said the name still as an exhalation of pain. “My God, I loved her. I’ll always love her. And I’ll always have to live with knowing I couldn’t protect her. But I can’t kill off those other kids to restore the timeline. I just can’t.”

“Because they’re hers?”

“Because they’re kids.” Flynn shook his head. _You didn’t seem to have those scruples at the Alamo._ Never mind--breaking his own rule there. Time for another drink. “What are you really asking? If it’s OK to walk away from Jessica and your kid? It’s different. I’m leaving Lorena to a happy life. What’s ahead for Jessica?”

“Rittenhouse being her _family_ , sounds like.” He heard the bitterness in his tone and couldn’t bother to conceal it, felt the urge to throw something.

“You ever really let her in?” Wyatt looked up at him, not understanding. “It sounds like you two got married when you were just kids. A lot’s changed. Whenever you came back from saving the world, you ever talk to her about it?”

“You ever tell your wife the shit you got up to?” Wyatt snapped.

Flynn sighed, rubbing his eyes with the heel of his hand. “There are, I find, two schools of thought in choosing a lover when you’re in a business where you deal with life and death situations. Soldier. Spy. Cop. Doctor. Some want their partner to be a respite from all that, and also not have all that ugliness touch them. The others, well, they tend to go for the ones who’ve been there and know that darkness too. My father was a police officer, and he very much wanted my mother to be that safe haven.”

“Let me guess. You’re the second type.”

“Lorena was a Red Cross nurse who I met in Darfur. So yes, I didn’t tell her everything, but she knew enough to hear a lot of it.”

“And Lucy?” The words were out before he could halt them. “I mean, she’s not…” She was a historian, out of her depth. They both knew it. “She’s not meant to be out there doing this shit, you know?”

“Isn’t she?” Flynn glanced up at him, giving another of those enigmatic smiles of his. “She’s been out in the field for close to two years, fighting the good fight. If this was Baghdad, or Mogadishu, and she was an non-combatant aid worker or anything else, you’d have to respect her as someone who’d been there. And Lucy’s become a combatant, Wyatt. She’s our chief intelligencer, she’s lied on the spot and saved our asses more times than you can probably count, and she’s picked up a gun and killed people. As for your wife? Jessica’s obviously skilled enough to have run an extended honeytrap on you--sorry--and extracted Jiya and the Lifeboat as her target from right underneath our noses.”

Wyatt started peeling the label off his first empty bottle. “You sound like you admire Jess for that.”

“It's like I told you three on the Watergate mission. Hate that she's on the wrong side, but I respect that she’s apparently damn formidable. As is Lucy. From what I’ve seen of them both, I’d have hired either of them for Illyrian as field ops without hesitation. Why is it that you need them both to stay safely in the box?” 

He obviously didn’t get it, and he struggled to frame it in words. “Because there’s got to be _something_ good out there that all this shit doesn’t corrupt, or what the hell are we fighting for?”

“That’s...interestingly Victorian of you to assume women need to avoid ‘corruption’,” he punctuated the last word with air quotes.

“Oh, fuck you. It’s not that they can’t, it’s that they shouldn’t have to.”

“Well, someone has to. And they’ve chosen--well, Lucy chose to fight. Jessica…I’m not sure she ever had that option. Rittenhouse got to her so young.” Flynn set down his beer bottle gently. Leaned in closer. “Look. I’m under no illusions here of what I am. But if they can take me on after everything I did, don’t you think there’s hope for Jess?”

The idea of it burst to life in him, burning brightly. “Maybe.”

“Do you want her back?”

“I…” 

“Simple question, really. Do you want your wife and child back, and are you willing to do whatever it takes?”

“Whatever it takes? I’m not ready to turn the Alamo into a massacre, if that’s what you’re asking.” Cheap shot, but he’d been sent stumbling off balance badly enough that it was the safest way to recover.

“For what it’s worth, when I realized what Santa Ana was doing, I begged him. For the lives of the women and children. One father to another. He threw me out of camp, told me he’d shoot me if I tried to interfere any further, and I knew going to the fort would get me shot. I was…” Flynn licked his lips nervously. “When I got back to 2016 and read that you’d managed to get them out alive...”

 _Seemed like we fixed a lot of your screw ups._ But he kept his mouth shut, stayed on target. “So what are you suggesting I do, genius?”

An impatient huff answered him. “You really don’t listen. Jiya pretty much spelled it out. Actually say you’re sorry for having your head up your ass. Acknowledge this is in their hands whether they want you back or not. Admit you didn’t do right by them. Stop trying to hide behind not intending it. I didn’t intend to turn the Alamo into a would-be bloodbath either, but it almost did, and if it had, that would be my fault. In short? This isn’t a military operation. They’re your friends, and that’s messy. No clear-cut by-the-book of consequences on this. You’ve got to accept once you offer up your apologies, and tell them that you’re willing to listen to what they need from you, that they’re calling the shots. Take it on the chin, do your best to be there for them, and don’t take it personally if they shove you out from something.” 

“Like you didn’t take it personally about us not showing you those Rittenhouse photographs of Jessica?”

“Ouch. Touche.” Flynn shrugged, in that overly dramatic way he had. “You’re right. I hadn’t earned that yet.” His eyes, a deep green in the summer sunlight, bored into Wyatt’s. “That goes for Jessica as well, though. She ran because in the end, she couldn’t trust you enough to have that beat her ties to Rittenhouse. You think she didn’t know all along that you hadn’t let go of Lucy?”

“Insisting I close the books with Lucy serves you really well, doesn’t it?”

Flynn muttered something in what Wyatt assumed was Croatian. “Can you think about Lucy for about five seconds without your needing to make this about me? If you truly care for her, why do you want her miserable by refusing to let her go? And Jessica, if you’re really, truly committed to saving her and your son or daughter from Rittenhouse, why do you need to keep that door open with Lucy?” 

“Because even if Jess gives Rittenhouse the middle finger, she may walk away from me.” It terrified him to admit it, but something about the hard honesty of this let him say it. He busied himself putting the empty bottles back in the cardboard carrier, if only to have something to do.

“She could. Some of that’s out of your hands too. But if you don’t commit totally to her and show it, and if you insist on keeping Lucy as a fallback option--and _seriously_ , can you think about what an insult that is to both Lucy and Jessica--I guarantee your wife is going to walk away. And she’ll be right. You need to decide exactly what you want, one way or another. Either you want Jessica back, entirely, and you accept her as she is, or you want to try to save her, but you intend that the marriage is over. And whatever you decide, you shut the door on the other option, lock it, and throw away the key. Done and over.”

“So is this where you tell me Lucy’s off limits?”

The expression on Flynn’s face came across as nothing so much as _You poor dumb bastard, you still don’t get it._ “No, Lucy makes her own choices. You need to accept that too.” He inhaled deeply. “So that’s your decision?”

No, it wasn’t, he’d said it only to lash out. “No. I...I want Jess…”

“Have you thought about what that means, exactly? Taking her back unconditionally, forgiving her for lying and for betraying you to Rittenhouse? Not getting to bring that up as a weapon every time you’re pissed? Because if you can be that man, Wyatt, then yes, I think you’ll be very happy together. But right now, you’re a damn powderkeg. You never got much beyond that scared kid hoping his daddy wouldn’t drag him out behind the trailer and pull off his belt.”

“Hey, I never hit--”

“You hit Lucy, didn’t you?” he interrupted coolly. 

“That was an accident!” Lucy’s face, the way she’d held up her hands to fend him off, and told him _No_. Walked away, and he’d felt so disgusted with himself, so pissed at Flynn for making it happen.

“Sure. And it happened because you couldn’t control yourself enough to not lunge at me, and you were so caught up in the rage that you lashed out at anyone trying to stop you.” Flynn raised an eyebrow. “Until you admit that’s a problem, pal, and not everything can be solved with fury and fists, you’re still becoming your father.”

“And I suppose you never had any problems,” he couldn’t help but sneer, some part of him itching to reach for one of those empty beer bottles, wanting a weapon ready to hand just in case. “Perfect husband, perfect father, huh? Gonna sit there and judge me because you’ve walked a mile in my shoes and chose differently and never ever hit back at your old man because you’re _such a pacifist_ , until you went crazy and turned into an international, inter...time terrorist?”

“You’re looking for ‘interchronological.’ No, you thickheaded tumbleweed. I finally hit my father back. The day after Christmas, a month before I turned sixteen. Because I was already six feet tall, and so incredibly tired of his shit. We both immediately realized, along with my mother, that if this kept up, it would end with one of us dead. Mom sent me to a friend’s house for a couple weeks until we straightened things out.”

“I hit my dad too when I was fifteen. Stole his car and drove it into the lake. When I turned sixteen and got my license, I drove off. Spent the next couple of years with friends whose parents wouldn’t report me to foster care. Then 9/11 happened. So I enlisted.”

“I got my chance earlier. My friend’s older brother Domagoj was involved with a pro-Croatian nationalist militia, got me involved by New Year’s, and well--when you’re a teenage boy pissed off at the world, looking very much to matter, and then your homeland goes to war that spring? I ran away. I was big enough to pass for eighteen easily, and nobody was checking records too closely anyway.“

“So you know what it’s like.” So why was the man dragging the hell out of him, if he understood? That was what Wyatt couldn’t understand.

“Of course. And it took me years to realize what my father had turned me into, and it scared the hell out of me. But in the end, I decided I didn’t want to be that man. And then Lorena and Iris proved that it was worth making myself be better than he was.” Flynn shook his head, leaned in close, almost close enough to kiss or stab. His voice came out as half an irritated growl, eyeing Wyatt like some great cat about ready to pounce. “Enough of being a scared little boy. Grow up. Quit half-assing it. You’re a husband. You’ll be a father in about five months, whether you see that child or not. You want the best revenge on your old man? Reject what he was. All the anger, all the violence, all the need for control and fear, all the insistence he was always right and everything was someone else’s fault. All his stupid bullshit that made him a small, petty, insecure man who had to punish everyone else and mistook control for love. All that stuff that’s made you afraid that if you screw up, people will be done with you. You fucked up, yes, but that doesn’t make you a fuck up. Admit you’re not the man you want to be, put in the work to be the man she deserves, or let her go. That’s where you’re at.” He laughed, giving a sheepish expression and a shake of his head. “Where we’re both at, fine.”

As much as he hated Flynn in that moment, irritating shit as he was, he also felt a weird sense of gratitude. Because there it was, as nonsensical as some of it seemed. Brutal honesty and clarity, written in black and white, rather than just that ambiguous _figure it out and fix this already_ he got from Jiya and Lucy. He’d never have expected that Garcia Idiot Flynn might actually be helpful in this, but he supposed he’d had stranger alliances in his day. And he supposed if nothing else, Flynn obviously wanted to see him succeed with Jess, if for no other reason than it definitely cleared things up with Lucy. And he was right in that he needed to be all in with Jess, even if it hurt to shut the door on everything he and Lucy could have had. Obviously she’d moved on anyway. “Orders clear, sir,” he said, with a crisp parade ground salute.

Flynn snorted in amusement. “Carry on, soldier.” He gestured to the bottle. “Finish that up and we’ll get some food.”

“You take me out to yell at me and then buy me lunch? Is this how you usually try to make friends?”

“I’m saving you from yourself and the wrath of our teammates, _and_ buying you a beer and lunch. You’re welcome, idiot.”

“Fine, asshole. I think I saw a Denny’s a mile back.”

“Well, are you actually going to eat, or insist we fight in the parking lot to make yourself feel better?” Flynn smirked at him, grabbing the cardboard carrier for the beer. “Damn, and I always forgot to get a set of dueling pistols through all those trips to 18th and 19th centuries. Guess you’re out of luck.”

Heading for the Civic again, Wyatt told him, “Clearly you’re Hamilton in that duel, because you literally cannot shut up.” Yes, he’d listened to the musical, even before this whole time mission thing, and he’d loved it. Seemed like the ultimate American story--immigrant, self-made man, fighter, policymaker. Sometimes he’d secretly hoped they’d have a mission involving Hamilton.

Flynn gave him a look of almost deranged mock glee. “Can it be? Wyatt Logan knows some history? _Mirabile dictu_. Lucy will be so proud.”

Lucy being proud of him would be a nice change from the current status of things. All right, he still wanted to strangle Flynn half the time, but maybe, just maybe, they could work together. Maybe he could trust the man had his back. Like Flynn pointed out, not like he had much other choice. He had to make good with Jiya and Lucy, and he couldn’t get Jess back alone. “Don’t get too used to it,” he said, not sure whether he meant the history, their apparent ceasefire, or any of it.


	10. 3x03: Children of the Dragon (Lucy/Garcia: Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, July 2018)

Morning was the best time for training, given the Lifeboat became a noisy hive of activity in the afternoon, and the worst of the heat crept into the barn along with it. Exercise, she decided, was much better done before lunch. Lucy hated feeling fragile, but given growing up in California’s relatively clement weather, she had been in no way prepared for the humidity out here, though she reminded herself they were mere miles from the Mason-Dixon line and technically, the South. She didn’t look forward to winter here, or wherever they might be come October or November, given Denise kept making rumbles about this not being safe enough to become a permanent location. 

Only fair, she supposed, but she’d admit she would miss this place. The slightly shabby farmhouse, the barn, the town and the battlefield park, the sense of history that lay thick across all of it, as if secrets and stories waited in every corner only waiting to be told for those with the patience to slow down from twenty-first century life and stop, wait, and look closer. The bunker had felt sterile, and like a prison it was. Even Mason Industries was too slick, high tech and looking only to the future. Gettysburg felt alive to her. Her mother and her tactics with guilt had kept her in California, but maybe Amy had been right. She probably should have taken her own path. _Go east, young professor._

But there were other lessons to be learned right now. She sat on the log bench in the barn, doing up her hands with the black fighters’ hand wraps. By this point the motions of it, weaving across her hand and palm and wrist, between her fingers, had become almost instinctive, meditative. She’d gotten to the point now that she could do the wraps up properly herself, rather than Garcia having to do it for her, and that felt like a small victory. Good that she’d worn them to begin with, given he’d told her they were for helping brace all the small bones of the hands and distribute the force of a blow better, especially while she still learned proper technique.

Tying her hair back, she started stretching as he did up his own wraps, hands steady and sure, barely having to watch as he did it. “So, what’s your background anyway?” she asked him. Funny thing how the ability to simply talk about things seemed to have moved away from his room and a bottle of vodka to everyday conversation. They’d turned that corner somewhere along the ride to Port Royal, the first time she’d truly been alone with him in daylight since he’d come to the bunker, and she couldn’t regret it. “You’re a little too, I don’t know, MMA-ish capable for just learning it all from battlefield brawling, and it’s not like you had Wyatt’s formal Green Beret and Delta training.”

He raised his head, raised an eyebrow, and she couldn’t help but read into that expression that he wasn’t terribly impressed with Wyatt’s Delta fighting credentials. “Well, I _was_ pretty much a straightforward brawler for a long time,” he said, slinging the second wrap’s loop around his right thumb, making the first turn across the back of his hand with casual ease. “Not like you really have time to jam in some aikido lessons while on mission in Tikrit or Grozny, and that was my life for many years.”

“What, Danil teach you that, as well as guitar?” she teased him lightly. It said something that she could refer to Danilbek openly now as his ex-boyfriend, and Garcia would openly talk about him and acknowledge it. Obviously he’d seen she was safe to come out to, just as she’d seen that in him.

“Lorena actually pushed me,” he answered her, finishing up the wrap. “She was a black belt in taekwondo. Told me that I probably should stop looking like a bad Rocky film when I fought, all,” he raised his fists, demonstrating wild swings, “jab, jab, hook, uppercut. There were taekwondo _dojangs_ and MMA clubs in both Split and Baltimore, so once we were married and I was more settled with Illyrian and the NSA, there I went. Added something new to the repertoire.”

Lucy’s cheeks burned. Another way she couldn’t seem to measure up to the formidable and formerly late, now never-was, Mrs. Lorena Flynn. For that matter, Danil had taught him guitar, probably other things too. Garcia sat right there, ready to keep teaching her to defend herself, and she wished she could return the favor and teach him something useful. “Did you two ever–” She gestured to their makeshift gym.

“No, she knew self-defense, and she kept up with her classes, but it wasn’t like this. You don’t need the edge so sharp when you’re not going into a war zone on a monthly basis.” He shook his head, looking annoyed with himself. “I let it lapse too. So–this is good for me.” She wasn’t sure how teaching a clumsy novice thirty-five-year-old historian helped keep him sharp, but she’d take it. Somehow hearing that training and sparring together was only theirs felt strangely good too, like she wouldn’t have to try so hard to find some piece of him that hadn’t belonged to Danil or Lorena first, and belonged to them still because inevitably they’d done it better. Although some part of her worried that she was being a jealous shrew by it. It wasn’t like he probably panicked about what pieces of her life Marissa, Wyatt, Jake, and others had shared with her before he ever blasted his way into 1937 and into her life.

She drew a leg up on the bench, putting her wrapped hands around her knee to hold it there. “Amy ended up a black belt in karate,” she admitted, not bothered as much at admitting her own failures to him. Unlike her mother, he wouldn’t judge and then wield it as a club against her. “Once she started going, she begged me to come do it with her, I…fell during my first belt test, broke my elbow, and…” She shook her head, twenty-one years later and still so embarrassed with herself. “My little sister was seven years old and a pint-sized badass, and I was fourteen and couldn’t even not trip over the hem of my own stupid _gi_ pants.”

He sighed, wetting his lips with his tongue, giving her that particular sidelong glance that meant he would say something he worried she might take the wrong way, but he’d do it anyway. “I assume your mother had some passive-aggressive comment about how this should be a lesson about why some failures are messages, and you should have known better. And so you never went back.” It no longer seemed that strange when one or the other of them instinctively seemed to follow each others’ thoughts without them being said, as if half their conversations sometimes took place without words. 

She nodded in reply. “So I never went back. I joked that I’d just get Amy to protect me.” But Amy wasn’t here. And like she’d told him, she wasn’t going to hide behind him or Wyatt any longer. She’d gotten sick of being helpless dead weight, and the situation was that much more dangerous now besides.

“Well, you keep coming back now,” he observed, giving her a smile that eased the pressure of stormcloud darkness from old memories, old failings, old insecurity. 

He drove her hard, wouldn’t settle for less than her best or less than precision, pointed out where she’d let down her guard or failed to see an opening. But he also complimented, explained carefully, took breaks when he sensed she was too much on edge, sat down and talked about trivial things. From him, the high standard was a compliment and faith in her, and a necessary pact between them that he’d push her until she was capable. Funny how different it felt to be enabled rather than belittled. He’d help make her better, rather than chase her away. “So,” he got to his feet and offered her a hand, “shall we begin?”

She took it, enjoying the momentary feel of his fingers brushing against hers, even with the rough cotton of the hand wraps. Felt that electric crackle between them that had heightened a step since they’d talked on the battlefield, a sudden tightness in her chest and an answering quivering pulse low in her belly, unable to turn off that increased awareness of him. But she made herself let go rather than linger in the sensation. There would be time for that later. Someday, when everything fell better into place, and her heart and mind were as utterly certain on this course as her body. 

An hour later, she had the oddest feeling that they were closer after this, and she felt better about herself, than she’d been after sex with some people. Though there were more than a few parallels. They were both sweat-soaked, exhausted, she’d spent a good part of it learning the rhythm, what opportunities she could seize, what moves moved on him and didn’t. She couldn’t help a wry chuckle at it. Hadn’t even kissed him, except that once as a mission fake-out in Zagreb, and that didn’t count, and yet, this had its own kind of intimacy.

“Confederate greyback for your thoughts?” he joked lightly, sitting down next to her on the bench, reaching for his water bottle. “I hear you can get accurate reproductions in the souvenir shops in town easily enough. Maybe we should stock up on both that and Union greenbacks in case we get sent to the Civil War again. We could have used a bit of cash on the road to Port Royal.”

“That river crossing would have gone more easily with a little bit of bribery,” she had to admit. 

“You handled it well. The genteel wrath of ‘Lucille Preston of the Charleston Prestons’,” he drawled the words in a fairly accurate imitation of a Carolina coast accent, though he could never fully shed the faintest edge of his own Croatian accent, “is a force of nature no butternut sergeant was ready to withstand.”

She tried to remember her whole spiel, tipped her chin up, and tried to look down her nose at him. Much easier when it had been a sentry on foot and she’d been on horseback rather than sitting on a log bench beside a man taller than her, but it was the air of arrogance that counted. “I do declare, it does not befit the _behavior of a Southern gentleman_ to question a woman being on the road in these _troubled times_ to visit her poor widowed sister in her _hour of need_ , nor for you to cast aspersions on the _patriotism_ of my _dear fiance_ , because this is _Count Gerhard von Flehnsberg_ , who has come all the way from _Bavaria_ to join his _mother’s people_ in fighting for our _glorious cause_ , and have you not heard of the colonel’s _gallantry at Shiloh_ where he was so _grievously wounded_ fighting right beside our _dear departed_ General Johnston, _sir_?”

He gave her a grin, leaning one arm on his knee and shaking his head, chuckling to himself. “Obviously you buy dramatically emphatic words in bulk at CostCo, Lucille Preston.”

“You should talk about dramatics, Gerhard von Flehnsberg, because I saw how much you enjoyed confronting that sergeant with a load of Union infantry and cavalry at your back on the return trip,” she retorted, and he laughed again, waving a hand in acknowledgment of it.

He smirked with satisfaction and absolutely no apology, and replied, “That’s what he gets, the scoundrel, for not being properly gallant to my cherished fiancee.”

But she shied away from admitting her actual thoughts. Too much, because she couldn’t think of a ready flippant sexual joke that suited. “Funny thing, there was a printer in Philly, Samuel Upham, who started printing reproductions as ‘souvenirs of the rebellion.’ The quality of the real thing was so terrible they were easy to fake. It turned into him cranking out counterfeits by the thousands, because Confederates kept buying them, cutting off the corner with his mark, and using them down South. For a little while he was one of the most wanted men by the Confederates, with a death sentence on his head, because they were afraid he’d help crash the economy by devaluing the currency with so many fakes.”

She watched him, seeing the look on his face. She loved him smiling, even that damn smirk of his, and the cocky grin he sometimes had, but she treasured this one, so unexpected, a gentle expression like he actually enjoyed her babbling historical tidbits at him. Like almost anything she could do or say was worth his time and interest. “Clever, subversive, and a certain flair,” he said cheerfully. “Love it.” She noticed he didn’t press, though he must be aware she’d dodged the question by going on a tangent. He hesitated for a moment then, eyes looking very dark in the gloom of the barn, watching her expression carefully. “Assuming Emma doesn’t decide to try and start the apocalypse again, would you like to get out for some dinner this weekend, maybe Sunday?”

“Are you asking me out on--” Oh, hell, and she cut herself off as abruptly as she started, afraid to push too far, and her cheeks flamed with embarrassment and panic. _Stupid, Lucy, so stupid. “Date” comes with a whole load of expectations, doesn’t it? And you’re not ready for any of that._

“I’m asking someone whose company I enjoy to get the hell out of this mission-based fishbowl for a few hours. Eat some food. Maybe talk about things that don’t involve Rittenhouse or the potential collapse of American freedoms, beyond whatever the current idiot president is trying to do in his own right, anyway.” He shrugged, suddenly awkward. “There’s you and there’s me,” he gestured between the two of them, “and whatever we choose to do with that. After everything we’ve been through, I don’t think that needs anyone else’s opinions or expectations.” He raised his eyebrows, spreading his hands out and shrugging dismissively. “They can talk once they’ve been through what we have.” 

She breathed a sigh of relief. He’d let her off the hook gracefully there, and with that, the pressure eased again. “I’d say we’re so far off the beaten path we’re certainly making our own map.”

He gave her another of those cheeky smiles. “ _Hic sunt dracones_?”

She softly applauded. “Ah, someone’s been studying their Latin. Bravo. And yes. Dinner would be good.” She couldn’t resist smiling in return, and also couldn’t resist raking him over the coals a little. “After all, the last time you bought me dinner, it was…”

“Chicago, 1893, yes, yes.” Impossible man, he actually blushed, obviously embarrassed himself.

“Though at least you did buy me dinner, rather than just a Pabst Blue Ribbon.” Seeing his expression still awkwardly hangdog, avoiding her eyes now, she told him, “You know I do forgive you, right?”

“I know.” He hitched himself up from the bench, and as he turned back to her, the smile he gave her now was sad, even a little wistful. “But sometimes it takes much longer to forgive yourself.”

She couldn’t let it go at that. She stood, reached out and put her hand on his arm, fingertips against bare skin, and felt the sudden tension in him, in her, at that touch. Didn’t bother to deny the undeniable pull was there any longer. She waited until he looked at her, until his eyes met hers. “Try. Please.” She licked her suddenly-dry lips, trying to find the right words. “Because you’re worth that.”

He looked away, inhaling deeply in a way that made her think he struggled to keep himself together at that. Then he nodded, said softly, ” _Hvala_.” Realizing he’d used Croatian, he corrected himself. “Thank you.” 

“ _Molim_ ,” she answered. God bless the Internet. Though polite pleasantries, the curses he’d taught her, and asking where the library or bathroom were ran through the current extent of her Croatian. Somehow she wasn’t surprised that his look contained admiration rather than shock. She let go his arm only reluctantly, once again caught in one of those moments she wished could last for so much longer. “We should go get ready for the day.” 

Showered and dressed in clean t-shirt and capris--nobody to impress, especially as they’d be hard at work on the Lifeboat soon enough--she headed down to the living room, seeing Connor at the coffee table with his blueprints, muttering over them. Denise sat in the battered tan plaid armchair, knitting furiously with yarn in a peacock blue-green, and Lucy had no idea how she could hold a scarf on her lap and not die of the heat. Jiya sat on the old burnt orange couch with the PS4 she’d brought back last week turned on, controller in hand. “OK, so I’ll be playing The Last of Us, but I told Garcia,” she said, glancing up at Lucy, “you two really need to play Assassin’s Creed. Any or all of them.” She smiled, both wryness and sadness wrapped into the expression all at once. “I missed video games. I’ll admit that.”

She sat down beside Jiya. “Might as well start picking it up, then.”

“Your mom wouldn’t let you play?” Jiya guessed.

“She thought I had, ah, much better uses of my time.” _Really, Lucy, you’re a smart girl. You’re going to help change the world. Why would you want to waste your time on frivolous things like that?_

_Oh, shut up, Mom._

Garcia came downstairs then, glancing at their would-be lazy Wednesday morning party, and sat down on the couch on the other side of Jiya. “This isn’t Assassin’s Creed, is it?”

“I already told Jiya we get the television for the Croatia/England match later today,” Connor interjected. “And that we’ll, ah, bend today’s work session rules slightly. If Rittenhouse thinks to interrupt _that_ , I might well have to make the jump so I can strangle Emma myself.”

“Hey, Lebanese people respect soccer,” Jiya said, sounding vaguely offended.

“So do Indians,” Denise added coolly. “My mother is still a huge fan.” 

All of them looked at Lucy and she gave an awkward thumbs up. “I, ah, don’t know much about it, sorry. Mom wasn’t big into sports either?” she offered apologetically. “But guess I’ll learn.”

“Well, Lucy, the important thing is Croatia is very much the underdog in this World Cup, but they’re going to send England home in disgrace,” Garcia told her. “We’ll teach you the rest.”

“Oh, in your wildest dreams, Garcia,” Connor retorted, making an irritated stroke of the pencil on the blueprint. “It’s been a truly fine run, all credit to Croatia, but they just don’t have the stuff to make the finals.”

“Keep it to that level of friendly trash talking, or trust that I’m kicking you both out to a bar to go watch,” Denise told them sternly. “And if you cause any scenes and get arrested, I’m absolutely not bailing you out until the next morning so you learn your damn lesson.” Garcia winced at that, obviously reminded of his own recent prison sojourn, awkwardly reaching up to rub the back of his neck.

“If both Garcia and Wyatt could both come home alive two days ago, Denise, I think we’re fine,” Connor said, tongue-in-cheek.

As if summoned like a genie, there was a creak on the stairs, and they all turned to see Wyatt standing there, coming down from his room. He gave an awkward wave, arms then instinctively crossing over his chest. “Uh, hey.” They hadn’t seen him much since Monday, when the shit finally hit the fan, and after he and Garcia went for a drive, he’d kept to himself except during their afternoon work sessions. It wasn’t much different on the surface than the last few weeks: Wyatt hanging around the edges, not saying much, not involving himself much, but there was a different feel to it that Lucy tried to define. As if Wyatt had deliberately removed himself to think, rather than being a bitter, brooding presence on the fringe of things.

She had asked Garcia about it, and he’d looked at her and said only, _I think I got through to him at least somewhat. Now he’s got some things to think over. And he’ll decide whether he can come back or not._ Frustrating as it was to be shut out from that, frustrating too that Garcia was the one to potentially turn Wyatt around when she hadn’t, it was at the same time a relief that she hadn’t had to try to do it. Awkward, muddled, and sometimes resentful as her feelings were towards him still, she hadn’t needed that extra weight. 

“Hey,” she returned, sensing him staring at the five of them and wondering if he still had a place there. She nodded slightly towards the empty chair, a twin to the one Denise sat in. Jiya paused her game. 

He crossed the room, sat down, looking at all of them in turn, hands clasped between his knees. Lucy had a sudden thought of Puritans, publicly confessing their sins in front of their entire community in the church, and asking to be forgiven. Wyatt hadn’t been on that mission to Salem, but the feeling was there all the same. “I haven’t…” He sighed, eyes closed for a moment, then started again. “Yeah. I haven’t been the teammate I should.” He looked at each of them in turn again, a beseeching look on his face, and Lucy could see the flickers of fear in his eyes. “The friend I should. But I know a team’s only as strong as the trust between them. And I screwed that up. I’m sorry I let you down. Sorry I had my head up my ass, and I didn’t think about the rest of you. You know I’m all in on getting Rufus back. But beyond that, I don’t know how to fix all of it. How to make it up to you. But...if you can, please. I guess maybe I’m finally ready to listen. I don’t want to walk away from this and from you, OK?”

Lucy saw how they all instinctively turned to Jiya, as the one with the most to forgive, and to Denise, as the mission leader. Jiya gave a half-nod. “All right,” she said quietly. Denise knitted another few stitches, and nodded herself.

Wyatt breathed out a sigh that could have been nothing but relief. “Thanks. I promise I’ll...do my best.”

“We’ll tell you if you’re going astray,” Garcia said, and surprisingly, it didn’t sound much like a threat or a sarcastic promise. Wyatt flicked a glance his way, half-annoyed, but nodded, grimacing slightly. She had to admit to a spark of pride in him at that.

“We’d do it for any of us. That’s what friends do, right?” she asked. Remembered how it felt to finally realize that she didn’t need to panic at being wrong, not having all the answers, that she didn’t need to _earn_ her place on every mission by being Little Miss History. The warmth that went through her at the notion that Wyatt and Rufus, and then Jiya and Garcia, would keep her, care for her, care about her enough to call her out if need be because they cherished the relationship with her enough to repair it rather than needing a sense of power over her, had been a revelation. It had felt like an awakening, a single candle that became a bonfire, after so many years of darkness.

Connor smiled at that. “Family,” he corrected gently, glance sliding over towards Denise. Denise gave him a half-smile in reply.

“Then I guess I have to ask you about something else.” Wyatt’s fingers clenched on the arms of the chair, jaw tense, and then he slowly eased up. “Jessica. I want...I want to give her a chance.”

“Because she’s your wife?” Jiya asked steadily.

“That’s part of it. Yes, I want my wife back.” Lucy couldn’t help the resentful thought that she hoped he meant it this time. “Yes, I want to have a chance to have our kid and know them. But...mostly because Jessica deserves a chance,” Wyatt said. He gestured towards Garcia. “Look, this is gonna sound like my usual playbook, but, I swear I’m not throwing him under the bus to make me or Jess look better. But objectively, let’s be honest. He did some pretty terrible shit. He tried to kill all of us. He kidnapped Lucy. He intended to set Rufus up to be killed by Capone.”

“All true,” Garcia said, and his voice was rock steady, but she could sense the nervousness in him regardless, saw him look towards Denise as if trying to read her reaction to hearing him admit to the man he’d been. Denise’s face was unreadable.

“He did all that, and we gave him another chance, and looks like he’s proven he deserved it.” Lucy looked at Wyatt, startled to hear those words coming from his lips, and she could see the tightness to Wyatt’s mouth, knew it bitterly galled him to say it, but he did it anyway. “Jessica kidnapped you, Jiya. She took shots at us in that gunfight. She helped set Rufus up for Emma to kill him.” His voice cracked. “She did all that. Yeah. I’m not denying it. But doesn’t she deserve that same chance that Flynn--Garcia?--got? That’s all I’m asking.”

Jiya spoke first, as they all seemed to sense they would, and again, Lucy got the sense they’d defer most to her opinion in the end. “Do you really think you can turn her?”

“She told me in Chinatown she was supposed to kill us once she got the intel Rittenhouse wanted. Probably destroy the Lifeboat. She said in the end, she couldn’t. She chose to change her mission and let us live. I think...I think she’s confused.”

Jiya bit her lip, sitting back on the couch, and finally putting the PS4 controller aside on the coffee table. “What do the rest of you want to do?” she asked, her tone deceptively soft.

The looks turned toward Denise. “I think,” she said, putting her knitting down on her lap, “that this is your team, the five of you. That the decisions made in the field are yours. Looks like that other me gave a second chance before to someone who was worth it, so...” 

Garcia blushed and looked away. “We weren’t exactly friendly there, Denise,” he muttered awkwardly.

“You were getting there,” Lucy argued. “I saw it.”

“I’m hardly one to comment on big mistakes made,” Connor chimed in next. “Since I’m technically responsible for this whole thing by taking that funding and then dancing to their tune. And from what you tell me, I was even more of an ass where you came from as I rolled over, handed my whole bloody company over to Rittenhouse, and caught both Rufus and Jiya in the mess because I was too frightened to speak up. I can’t believe everything about Jessica when she was with us was an act. If she wants to earn her way back from what she’s done, then so be it.”

Wyatt looked at her next. “Lucy?”

“She’s not Emma.” She managed to say it without flashing back to that alleyway too hard, but the vision came nonetheless. “I think if she was Rittenhouse to the bone and wanted us dead, we’d all have never woken up after the night we came back from the Combahee--uh--Willow Glen Plantation Raid. She’s done some awful things, yes, but...” But they were right. So had Garcia, but she’d insisted there was good in him, that he needed to turn away before it was too late, and she’d given him the chance to choose to pull back from the edge of the abyss, both in 1954, and then on the Salem mission. She couldn’t say that out loud though, and tell all of them too much that was still private between them. But she looked up and saw, as she knew she would, that he looked right at her, gaze locked on hers, understanding between them exactly what each of them thought. “Being honest, we’ve all done some pretty messed-up things in this war.” She couldn’t deny that. “None of our hands are clean.” 

Flynn nodded, looking away, glancing down at his hands, as if searching for Lady Macbeth’s spot. “I’m hardly one to deny her a chance to make up for her sins. And I’ve seen so many child soldiers, in every single war I’ve been in,” his voice oddly quiet. “She’s one of them. Rittenhouse bound her to their cause when she was what, three or four years old? She’s never had a choice. Never knew there was one. And I know what it’s like to believe there’s no way out. So, give her the chance, and let her choose. If she’s willing to turn, willing to help us take down Rittenhouse, even willing to help rescue Rufus...so be it.” 

They all sat in silence for a few long moments then, and it was Jiya who finally spoke. “Looks like we’re on the same page. All right, then.” She glanced over at Wyatt, expression unapologetic. “Don’t be offended if I don’t want to be around her for a while, though.”

Wyatt swallowed hard. “Got it.”

“Oh look, it’s almost time for the match,” Connor said with artificial cheer, reaching for the remote. “Shall we all watch together?” He smiled over at Garcia. “And educate our poor ignorant American kin on the beautiful game?”

“I think that’d be a very good idea,” Denise answered, taking up her knitting again.

~~~~~~~~~

“Well,” Connor spoke up as the crowd’s applause sounded, “your boys gave it all they had. They should be proud.” He clapped Garcia on the shoulder, heaving another glum sigh. “Damn, though, I’d hoped they could beat France.”

Yeah, he had too, given the huge victory over England only mere days ago. “Of course you did. It’s in your very heritage to want to see France humbled.” Given Hastings had taken place in 1066, at this point, it wasn’t unfair to say that fierce bad blood between England and France ran a thousand years old now.

“Bloody referees,” Connor muttered. “If not for that…”

“Yeah.” Well, the World Cup finals--still an utter point of pride, so far as he was concerned. The last time Croatia got anywhere near that was 1998, and he’d watched that game in Kosovo because even with as terrible as the situation was there, some things didn’t stop even in wartime. The reception had been terrible but the bar was crowded anyway because everyone had been going nuts. “Damn _France_ , though. Lost to them in the quarterfinals in 1998, and now this year?”

“Better every time, though, eh? Third in ‘98, second this year, clearly 2038’s your year,” Connor said with a full-throated laugh.

“I thought they did well?” Lucy said hesitantly, giving him an apologetic glance, sitting on the couch with her feet tucked neatly beneath her.

“Well, at least Rittenhouse hasn’t screwed up soccer, yet,” he said dryly. “Though they may have paid those referees.” Connor cracked up that that. It felt good to laugh about mundane things like that now and again, to make himself remember there was something out there beyond the timeline, the Lifeboat, and the war.

“Well, they did attempt to mess up the 1918 World Series,” Connor answered. 

“Wait, we had a mission in Chicago with the Black Sox?” Lucy said. “That didn’t happen.”

“Ah, yes it did?” Connor looked at her, shaking his head as if scolding her for her lack of memory. “Tried to let them get away with the fix by murdering certain people trying to sniff out the scandal. Get Rittenhouse interest in the teams early, and validate corruption and blackmail as a proud tradition in professional sports, as if there’s not bloody well enough of it already.”

“I have the mission report,” Denise spoke up, sipping her coffee, suddenly looking intent.

“I mean it didn’t happen for us,” Lucy said, gesturing to herself, Wyatt, Garcia, and Jiya. “In our timeline.”

He felt like an idiot, but then, he’d been dodging this for too long, like avoiding prodding a loose and rotten tooth with his tongue. He’d hinted at it this past Wednesday when Wyatt called him out--fairly--in front of Denise and drove home some of who he’d been, but that seemed to barely scratch the surface. The fact that she’d accepted it surprised him, but he’d hidden behind the grace of her not knowing for too long, and he’d possibly hamstrung the team by it. _And you call yourself a strategist._ Something that he’d seen they sorely lacked, given how the three of them kept up with him and Anthony, and then him and Emma, but they never once seized initiative. They always predictably met him on historical ground of his own choosing, following him around like obedient little ducklings pulled by hidden Rittenhouse strings. 

He’d observed that the three of them as a team were incredibly tactically gifted, but strategically, they were an utter clusterfuck. No wonder, given Wyatt was clearly too much an impatient _shoot first, ask questions later_ soldier, plus they‘d been handcuffed by a reluctance to nudge history, let alone light a firecracker under its ass. The fact they still succeeded often enough spoke well of them. 

He looked at Denise and straight out said it. “It’s time we all sat down and talked. Compared notes on what we remember, and what happened in this timeline. It seems like there aren’t many big changes,” aside from Emma turning his own past into a smoking ruin, “but Emma’s clever enough to exploit the small cracks of those differences if she realizes where they are before we do.”

Denise looked at him for a long moment, then nodded. “I’ll get my debriefing notes. Since I wasn’t there myself, and Connor only went on the Robert Johnson mission, all we have is the notes that you--your other selves?--gave us.” Might as well confess his sins and get it over with.

They all convened back in the living room five minutes later. “We already know it started differently,” Denise said, “and that Garcia’s role was somewhat different. What was the first mission?”

“New Jersey, 1937. I went to go save the _Hindenburg_ , so I could, ah, blow it up on the return trip with more historically significant figures aboard.”

“Told you so,” Lucy muttered to Wyatt. He tried to not feel a little bit betrayed at that. He deserved it.

“You didn’t exactly give me a road map,” he told her dryly. “Just told me the details--not sure what other conclusion I was supposed to draw. You pretty much implied I should light a stick of dynamite, throw it at history, and see what bits of Rittenhouse scurried out.” Reacting tactically, not strategically, because hell if he knew what the strategy was at that point. He’d only started to figure it out, refine his plan to surgically remove Rittenhouse’s key figures, when he was well into the middle of it. The Apollo mission had been the last straw. Listening to his mother talk about Janet Armstrong’s pending pain, he’d been so damn sick of just trying to blow everything up and claiming it didn’t matter who suffered and died, because it was getting no result anyway. He’d scoured the journal again after that, trying to piece together scraps of information and focus utterly and totally on Rittenhouse targets, using even vague references.

“Wait, what are you--” Connor said.

Lucy sighed. “A future me gave him a journal in 2014 after they killed his family, full of details about Rittenhouse, history, etc., so I apparently helped start this whole thing by directly giving him details on targets and telling him the time machine would be ready in 2016.” She eyed Wyatt. “Want to blame me for that?”

“Uh…holy shit, that journal thing wasn’t a hoax?”

“No, Wyatt, we all saw our future selves can travel back,” Jiya said grimly. “So I’m guessing not.”

“So this journal--” Connor held up a hand, looking interested. He didn’t know. He’d handed the thing to Lucy and for all he knew, she’d burned it, or read it, or even handed it over to Connor and Denise in that timeline. Probably not that last one, though, and she probably hadn’t dared to read it given she still asked him about it. If she’d read it for herself, she would have had to believe.

“He gave it back to me right before you arrested him,” Lucy said to Denise, and he couldn’t help but feel a small bit of satisfaction at the coolness in her tone. “I had it at my house--my mom’s house--when she kidnapped me. It was hidden in my room. I never went back after that, so I’m assuming it just got erased when Emma flipped the switch and kicked us to this timeline.”

“It’s gone. If either your mother or Emma had that journal and all the information in it,” he said dryly, “believe me, we’d know.” Rittenhouse would have been notably ahead of them at most every turn. Something ached strangely within him to imagine the journal was gone and erased too. Nowhere near the pain of Iris’ erasure, no, but it had been a part of his life for so long, his roadmap, his talisman, his connection to the woman he met in both 2014 and 2016, who’d seemed like two different women entirely then, but now in 2018 they were blurring together almost seamlessly. 

“Back on target, please,” Denise said. “All right, that matches. Rittenhouse went to 1937, apparently with the aim to make a bomb scare on the return trip of the _Hindenburg_ and save the day, and get better control over some key figures. Next?”

“I ended up assassinating Abraham Lincoln?” Even despite having saved the man only a little over a week ago, he still winced to say it.

Denise stared at him, and he tried to not cringe. “Didn’t happen here,” she said awkwardly. “Still John Wilkes Booth. Ah...next?”

“Stole an atomic bomb in Las Vegas, 1962, for the plutonium core. My plan, but Anthony’s idea. It gave the Mothership an--”

“Centuries-long battery,” Connor’s words were almost an exhalation of wonder. “Genius. Why on Earth didn’t we--”

“Because one doesn’t just walk into Mordor--uh--the federal government and casually request some plutonium for a science project, I’m guessing?” Jiya said wryly.

“Though...would a dual-agency request work?” Connor asked hopefully, looking between Garcia and Denise.

Denise sighed. “I have no idea, Connor, but let’s get back to the briefing, people. No, that mission didn’t happen either.”

“So the Mothership’s on a limited battery again.” He couldn’t help but smile. “Good. It takes so much longer to charge also. We’ve taken away one of Emma’s chief advantages.” And maybe it wasn’t anything he’d himself done to fix it, but he couldn’t help but feel the ruthless satisfaction that she’d shot herself in the foot with what she’d done in Baltimore, plus it undid one of his own mistakes. _There is sometimes a merciful God, with a sense of humor to boot._

“Did the Yamamoto mission happen?” Denise asked. Looking at their faces, she said, “I’m guessing not. You went to the Russo-Japanese War.”

“I speak Russian, so I suppose that proved useful.”

“And Rufus speaks--spoke--Japanese. Huge anime nerd,” Jiya told them, unable to hide her sad smile at the memory.

“Rittenhouse successfully assassinated Isoroku Yamamoto--”

“Pearl Harbor, of course,” Lucy said. “They were trying to prevent it by,” obviously switching into teacher mode, “killing the admiral who gave the order for it some thirty-five years before it happened? And I’m guessing hoping it would keep America from World War II and strengthen their bargaining position at the end of the war by running all of Europe and Asia down further?”

“Exactly. When did Pearl Harbor happen for you?”

“December 7th, 1941.”

“Now it’s July 4th, 1941,” Denise said. “Apparently the Japanese found another admiral eager to provoke a fight.”

“Yeah, fate has a way of making things still happen,” Jiya said, with a downward twist of her mouth, a distant look entering her eyes.

They methodically worked their way through the list. The Alamo hadn’t happened here, but Rittenhouse trying to delay the Black Friday crash by a few months and make the Depression worse had. The Black Sox, of course. In 1754 they’d instead all talked to Nonhelema and the local native tribes and tried to convince them to stay neutral in the coming wars. He’d rescued Gabriel, though he’d figured that out by his half-brother being listed as next of kin on his NSA information file. Bonnie and Clyde hadn’t happened, nor had the World’s Fair. So apparently he hadn’t had the most Godawful kidnap-slash-PBR dinner date imaginable with Lucy. She shot him a smirk when that one came up, and he ducked his head in awkward acknowledgment. He’d apparently used his NSA contacts to help Wyatt out and identify Wes Gilliam, and he and Lucy helped Wyatt and Rufus go rogue.

“So you told the truth.” Wyatt glanced across the table at him, looking vaguely impressed. “I always wondered if you screwed me over.”

“I...don't remember telling you. Don't remember anything about Jessica being dead, really." He couldn't help but shrug. "I mean, obviously I believe you three when you say it happened, but I wasn't on the 'memory preservation' train in 1941 when Rittenhouse decided to make that little timeline edit. But I would have honestly given you the information I got. I expect I called in some favors from NSA friends then too.” After they went to DC in 1954 to recruit Ethan Cahill--his and Lucy’s mutual plan, _quite the team_ \--things became more familiar in reviewing the events since last October. Granted, he’d been on-mission for their trips prior to Salem rather than rotting in prison, but the missions themselves remained the same. Which made sense, given Carol and Nicholas’ plans wouldn’t have altered much.

It was close to 5 o’clock by the time they finished comparing notes at length, and he had his share of food for thought. So much of it turned out the same, but a few things hadn’t, and especially with the Mothership battery, a fair amount could turn on that. “I expect we may see Emma try to get her hands on a plutonium core before long.” Seeing the looks in his direction, wanting explanation, he sighed. “She played me very well, yes, but I still got some sense of her over those few months. I think it’s in her nature to want to strike fast and furious, much like I did to start. The lack of battery will hold her back on that.” 

“One thing I did notice,” Connor said, “that was in place before, and which you lot don’t do...after Rufus was injured in the Capone mission,“ though not set up by Garcia himself, “everyone was training to pilot, even if only to be able to make an emergency jump home. Why did that not happen here?”

“Well, I don’t think anyone was going to vote to let me near the controls,” he said wryly. Lucy and Wyatt shrugged, as if to say they really didn’t know either.

“You told us it took close to a year to train a pilot,” Jiya told Connor.

“A fully capable one, yes. But you and Rufus both proved that wrong. You can pick up the basics in a couple of months.”

“I think that was shortsighted,” Lucy spoke up, hands clasped in her lap, but an intent look on her face. “We’re all working together on the Lifeboat every day, yes, but I think we need to schedule more sessions for things. We all need to be able to hold up our end of almost anything in the field. We all should learn basic piloting from Jiya and Connor. We should all learn to fight from Garcia. How to shoot--”

He interrupted her. “Wyatt should probably teach shooting.” From what he’d seen, the man was more than competent with firearms, and better than than Wyatt teaching his somewhat lackluster hand-to-hand. His own shoulder still wasn’t fully healed, so his shooting wasn’t what it ought to be. Good enough to teach Lucy some basics, but Wyatt would be steadier. Besides, he needed to have his place here, and to help earn his place back by being a part of things. 

Wyatt looked at him, obviously not sure whether to be grateful or annoyed. “Field survival skills,” he said, gesturing to himself and Garcia both. “We both can teach that, especially as we may be out in the wilderness.”

Jiya looked thoughtful. “Lucy can teach historical cultural stuff--how to act in the 18th century or the like. We need to stop relying on her to tell us exactly what not to do while we’re already there.”

“You’ve got the late 19th century better than me, though,” Lucy told her.

“Good,” Denise said. “It sounds like you’ve got a plan. Though it also sounds like between that and the Lifeboat work, it’ll leave a lot less free time.”

“We’ll make some time for fun so we don’t go crazy,” Lucy told her, cool as winter ice, “but we’re at war now. We’re it. We’re the ones left to fight Emma and what’s left of Rittenhouse. We’re fighting for Rufus, and to take Rittenhouse down. It’s about time we got fully serious about it.” Wyatt looked mildly taken aback at that, but he couldn’t help but feel the swell of pride himself at how far she’d come since the _Hindenburg_.

“Connor, how many seats can we fit in the Lifeboat?” Jiya asked him. “Seems like now is the time to do it, since we’re working on redoing the whole thing. We have four now, but there are four of us on the team. If we need to bring back Jessica, and when,” he noticed she said _when_ rather than _if_ , “we get Rufus, if we leave someone behind, there’s always the chance something could change while we jump and they get stranded.”

Connor grabbed a pen and a napkin, jotting equations and sketching what looked like a rough Lifeboat interior. “How cramped do you want to be?” he asked.

“Comfort isn’t an object,” Wyatt said. “We can all jam together for five minutes to make a jump.”

“I should be able to get a fifth seat in. That sixth seat, I’m not sure. Given I’m getting to upgrade the circuitry while we’re doing the rebuild, the math and programming won’t be an issue--that lack of proper programming was what caused your visions--but there really is only so much space in that hull.” He smirked at Garcia. “Especially as we have one very large person to accommodate.”

“See if you can do it,” Denise told him. “If not...best hope Jessica and Rufus don’t have to come back with you on the same mission.” Jiya gave Wyatt a hard look as if to say there would be no choice to make if that happened. Wyatt swallowed hard, and nodded in acknowledgment.

“All right, then let’s get in an hour or so of work on the Lifeboat, shall we?” Connor said. “Lucy, Garcia, you said you won’t be back for dinner?”

“We’ll go grocery shopping too,” Lucy said, and she didn’t blush at admitting they were going out for dinner. Though if any one of them said the word _date_ , he really might shoot them. Was it a date? He really didn’t know. He really didn’t care, maybe didn't want to try to define it yet. It was the two of them spending a few hours away from the war, and their sometimes annoying newfound family--because Connor was right on that--and that was what mattered. It didn’t need a label that came with certain ridiculous expectations and timelines and all of that.

Heading out to the barn, his phone rang. Plucking it from his pocket, his heart skipped a beat when he saw the name on the screen: _Gabriel_ , and an international, Paris-based phone number. Thought of the little boy in 1969 with his gap-toothed grin and messy brown hair, how he’d obviously been Maria Thompkins’ world, his gasping, wheezing breaths out on that back porch. The panic running wild within him that the epinephrine wouldn’t work, that he’d taken enough lives in the last few months that of course God couldn’t justifiably let him save one anymore, and he couldn’t save Iris, couldn’t save Gabriel, couldn’t save anyone.

Gesturing to Lucy to say he needed to take the call, he ducked aside from the barn door, heading towards the copse of trees, he mustered up his courage and answered. “Hello?”

“Garcia? Am I interrupting?” A man’s voice, the American accent faintly touched with the tones of the Croatian coast. He’d still been little when Maria moved to Yugoslavia, young enough to pick up the edge of the accent. He’d be fifty-five now, a grown man. An architect, living in Paris. He hadn’t dared to pull Gabriel’s vitals and see--was his brother married? Was he an uncle, even if on paper, Garcia Flynn had now never been a father? He’d never heard anything from Gabriel in a year and a half since coming back from 1969, but of course, he’d ditched his cell phone and everything else while on the run, so even if Gabriel had his number, he couldn’t call it. Or maybe that Gabriel James Thompkins had believed his younger half-brother was responsible for everything Rittenhouse framed him as having done, and wouldn’t have called anyway. 

But apparently here, this Gabriel and this Garcia, not on the run and without such deep sins on his soul, had talked. At least enough that his brother would call for some reason. “No, no, just…” He crouched down, sitting back on his haunches, watching a hawk making lazy swoops in the summer air. “Busy days, as always.”

“I can imagine. Feds running your ass off as usual, huh?” 

“Yeah. Is something wrong?”

“No, just been a few weeks since we talked, and I know things were rough, you being injured and all. I figured I’d call.” He rubbed his eyes, feeling oddly near tears. Something ached within him hearing the warmth there, the sympathy. A brother he’d never known, and who apparently cared enough to call just to talk to him. It felt like too much. Another gift he didn’t deserve and hadn’t earned, especially thinking of Lucy and how losing Amy still hurt her so deeply. _Come on, God, don’t mock her, she doesn’t deserve that._

“The shoulder’s pretty good. They still have me doing some physical therapy on it, but I’m almost back to normal.” Dr. Kovac had glowered at him last week, called him out for pushing it too much again, but admitted it looked better.

“Which, for you, means you’re like 80 to 90 percent, pushing yourself too hard, and probably lying through your teeth to the doctors and your team about it.”

It felt like a weird dissonance holding a conversation with someone who clearly knew him, but he had no clue about them. Another of God’s jokes and sense of justice, apparently, given he’d done that to Lucy with the journal more than once. Karma really was a bitch. “Sounds like you know me.” He realized the slip of the tongue only after he said it.

“Sounds like…?” There was a long pause on the other end of the line. “Miha,” he said then, very quietly, and switched to fluent Croatian, “has the timeline changed again?” Oh, damn. That made him well up again. Miha--the diminutive, because he’d gone by Mihajlo, his Croatian name, for most of his childhood. Having a Western name too opened doors, yes, but both his parents agreed it was much easier to fit in back in Yugoslavia of the ‘80’s by not standing out too much from his classmates, and there was no Croatian given name anywhere close to Garcia.

“Again?” he asked in return, switching easily to Croatian himself. “What do you mean by that?”

“I call you for your birthday in 2017, and the conversation is very weird, just as it is now. You didn’t call me on mine like usual. We finally meet up in March when I’m on a work trip to California. You’re probably a good actor for your job, but you’re not good at lying to those close to you, and I know you didn’t know me from a stranger. You finally asked me if I remember the day the moon landing happened. If I remembered getting stung by a bee on the back porch, and a man who saved me.” 

Relief flooded him at that, and regret for that other version of himself stuck lifting all the heavy weight of dropping that revelation, and him now reaping the benefit of it. Though damn, poor Gabriel, being through this once already, and confronting it again. “I told you, didn’t I? About the...time travel.” Funny how he hesitated to say it, even now.

“As much as you could, yes.” Gabriel sighed. “I’m sorry, Miha. I know things were bad enough for you as a kid with me there, but I can only imagine how much--”

“It’s all right,” he said tiredly, not wanting to dig up all of that history right now and relive it. “It’s all right.”

“So it changed again.”

“About a month ago, yes.”

“What changed this time?”

His left hand, the one not holding the phone, clenched into a first, and he looked down, saw the wedding ring still there. It went with him to 1733 and came back, even when his own history hadn’t. Proof that no matter what, they’d been real. The small pain of it felt like a spur that kept him going. “I had a wife. A daughter. They were murdered almost four years ago by the bastards we’re chasing, because I got too close to them for their comfort, but they’re gone for good now.” He couldn’t explain more than that, couldn’t bear it. He’d never know now what Gabriel thought of Lorena, assuming they’d likely met before everything went to shit thanks to Rittenhouse. 

“ _Jebemu sve_.” He could have laughed at the fact that yes, his American-born brother clearly got fluent enough in Croatian to use the appropriately sympathetic expression of “fuck” in this case.

“ _Jebemti život._ ”

“I’m sorry.”

“Thanks.” 

“Does this mean you and Lucy--” Oh, hell, his other self even told Gabriel about Lucy? Obviously they had indeed talked. As if she’d heard Gabriel through the phone, he saw her coming out from the barn, looking over towards him, and waving an arm frantically to gesture him over. Clearly not worrying about pizza toppings. It could be only one thing. The Mothership had jumped. He was on the phone with his brother he’d never known, and he and Lucy were supposed to go have dinner tonight, and all of that went up in smoke in an instant. _Oh, Goddammit, Emma, you really do know how to fuck up my life, don’t you?_

“Dammit. Gabriel, it’s an emergency, I’ve got to go.”

“Then go. But call me back when you can.”

“I will.” He actually meant it, because there were too many questions and not enough answers, and the idea of not being alone...yes, he’d call. “But if I haven’t warned you before, if you hear the name ‘Rittenhouse’, or if some redheaded woman named Emma comes anywhere near you, you run like hell. And you call me.” Because Emma would probably go after him. Carol Preston likely wouldn’t have cared.

“Be safe, _bratič_.”

“You too.” Maybe he did have a few good deeds to his credit, and those paid off. But it still felt like cheating God and fate and the system. Still--Iris was gone, and he’d accepted the necessity of it, even as his heart couldn’t let go, not yet. That sacrifice, as far as he was concerned, paid for damn near everything until the end of his life. But having this, a brother who cared, thinking of how much Lucy had loved Amy, was too much. Everything hurt as he raced towards the barn, but he managed to lock it down by the time he hit the doors.

He didn't bother with preamble as he headed back towards the Lifeboat. “When and where?”

Wyatt answered him, standing already by the Lifeboat stairs. “Las Vegas, September 21st, 1962.”

He couldn’t help but laugh. “Told you so.” He suspected predictive powers like that would have gotten him hanged in Salem as a witch.

Denise, hovering over Connor's shoulder as he worked the console, asked him, “How much does Emma know about that mission?” 

“Anthony and I told her the general outline..” He shook his head, impatient with himself. “Stupid of us. She asked, played it off as nerdy curiosity, and trying to fit in as the new team member.” Acting in awe of the Mothership battery, grinning at them and demanding to know the story behind it. 

“So she knows enough to follow your gameplan." Denise's mouth set into a grim line.

No point not admitting to it and letting his pride hinder them. “Yes. She does.” He have an awkward shrug. “But, ah, on the bright side, you’ve got me, it was my plan, this team is far better than the one I had then when I managed this mission, certainly better than whoever Emma's got. So we can definitely outrun her. Especially since she may not expect us. Wouldn’t be surprised if she thinks we’re fractured enough we haven’t bothered to compare notes.” Never mind that until today, Emma technically would have been correct. He wouldn't give her that satisfaction.

Jiya spoke up, already in the pilot’s seat and programming the jump. “You think she assumes we’re stuck here under that ‘No Lifeline’ rule.”

"And probably not thinking it through enough to realize if she's jumping there, then it's for the battery, and therefore we weren't there before. Or maybe she hopes we'll think she wants to kill Sinatra, or JFK? All right, let’s go, we’re already behind, and --” Lucy said

“We don‘t have to be.” He shook his head, impatient with the lack of foresight, and now finally feeling able to call it out in a way he couldn’t before, given the insecurity of his place in things. “Why is it you never caught on that you could jump there three hours or a day ahead of me? Every single time, you let me call the shots, and you _never_ came before me.”

“Yeah, bet you’re like that in bed too, Flynn,” Wyatt muttered.

He shot Wyatt a sidelong look. “Speak for yourself, Logan, or are you expressing interest in finding out? Told you. You're not my type.”

“We headed there after you because we always needed to figure out exactly what the hell you were planning in order to find you, and you usually left a few pretty big clues in your wake to direct us,” Lucy told him dryly. She put it politely. He'd usually left a few bodies. 

“Well, if you’d just asked nicely, maybe I’d have told you.” She shook her head, smiling at him as if to say he was impossible. “C’mon. We know exactly where and who she’s going for here. Let’s beat her to the punch.” 

“Fine.” Jiya turned back to the pilot’s console. “I’m not as precise yet as Rufus could get, but we’ll hit the ground like...six, seven hours before her.”

“Do we bring it back with us, or hand it back to the Department of Atomic Energy?” Lucy questioned, looking at Denise.

Denise mulled it over, and he could practically see the urge to do it by the book, good federal agent that she was. “If you just head off her efforts and it stays in 1962, I imagine she’ll just attack it again, until she gets it. No, we’d better get that plutonium here for safekeeping, and seize advantage while we’re at it. But I expect you to cover your tracks well. Federal agencies and the Army can’t be seen anywhere _near_ the historical record on this, or the conspiracy theories will be insane.” She glanced over at Connor, giving him a shrug. “Looks like you’ll maybe get your battery.” 

Lucy scampered up the stairs, Wyatt right behind her, almost puppyish in his eagerness to get back on mission. “Well, with any luck we’ll have a rather extensive road trip to get some buried treasure in the desert after this,” he quipped, grabbing the rails and swinging up onto the steps himself. Though he’d make damn sure he buried it in a different place than last time, just in case Anthony had told her too much on that front. “Thank God, I wasn’t looking forward to figuring out the necessary requisition forms for plutonium.”


	11. 3x03: Children of the Dragon (Jiya: Los Angeles, California, October 1918)

They’d had an unspoken agreement that whatever Connor needed while messing around with something as dangerous as plutonium, Connor got. Red Bull, In’n’Out Burger, whatever equipment necessary. Spotify tuned in to the Delta blues: Bessie Smith, Lead Belly, Lonnie Johnson, and others. Jiya spotted Lucy and Garcia giving each other knowing grins when they heard Robert Johnson come on, Lucy’s toes suddenly tapping a beat in her sneakers. Another mission Jiya hadn’t been on, and it hit her with a curious pang now to realize how much she’d missed always sitting back at Mason Industries or in the bunker. It sounded like in this timeline, they’d all rotated being benched occasionally, depending on the mission. 

She couldn’t help the pangs of guilt when she finally identified it. The picture turned just so, like focusing the angle of sunlight through a prism, like the chandelier at the Bison Horn that threw a cascade of rainbow jewels across the scratched and weathered floor for a few minutes most mornings when it wasn’t overcast, when the light hit the windows exactly right. She’d explained the science behind it to the other girls. Anyone clever enough to double-deal on poker or blackjack and shut down angry men could understand the physics of light.

Yes, it was all the angles of the light and objects, a mathematical function of latitude and time and seasonality and lack of obstruction and exactly how that chandelier, the Bison Horn, and even the streets of San Francisco, had been built and oriented. Perfectly neat, rational, and orderly phenomena. But the odds that all those things would align in exactly the way that produced that light show--it seemed like a tiny beautiful miracle in its own right. It seemed like the more she thought about fate, about inevitability, the more she had to allow for the idea of something more than physics and random chance. Not that she was about to start the full _salat_ , but sometimes she’d face towards Mecca and think _Allah’hu ahkbar_ in gratitude anyway, as she had long ago in the mosque with her mom.

But there were times when she watched those colors playing over the pinewood planks, that something flickered. Colors blurred, melded, sometimes seeing things that didn’t even have a name because they didn’t exist according to human perception and description. Colors both blue and yellow at once, or red and green. So apparently she and the mantis shrimp were in good company on that. Another sign that her brain had rewired differently on that trip to 1954, and she didn’t know if she was blessed or cursed or both, but she couldn’t help but think: _What am I becoming?_

Whatever she was becoming there, she’d become someone else, period, in the 1880s. Becoming someone else here too, given in Rufus’ absence she’d become part of the team now in a way she hadn’t been before. Three years in the past fending for herself showed her that door of her own strength, but it was really Wyatt’s complaints and insistence that provided the key. Wasn’t she a capable scientist? Proved on that DC mission that she could be a capable pilot too, if only given training? She’d been wrapped in cotton wool as the one with the “damaged” brain, shut out, kept home safely, while Lucy and Wyatt and Rufus chased everywhere across time, and all she could do was sit there and listen, hold down the console. Hell, even Garcia had gotten to be a part of it before her, when Lucy got him on-mission in Salem. They’d seen they could put in a fourth seat, but they hadn’t done it for her, and she knew damn well she’d only been allowed to go to 1981 because Garcia couldn’t. But apparently in this timeline that fourth seat went in right away back in 2016 when Denise recruited Garcia, and she’d been a part of the time-traveling team for over a year since Rufus’ injury and extensive recuperation from the Capone mission forced her into the pilot’s seat for the 1954 mission to recruit Ethan Cahill.

Sometimes it hurt thinking that they’d let an imprisoned terrorist on the Lifeboat before her, that somehow Rufus was the sole permitted scientist; not like Wyatt and Garcia weren’t covering each others’ territory too, and that was most of Wyatt’s friction about it. She missed Rufus every day, but there was a curious numbness in her realizing that both in this timeline, and the one she remembered, it had taken his absence to let her step up and fully earn her place as one of the time travelers. Did it have to be one or the other? Rufus _or_ belonging to the team? It wasn’t fair. If Wyatt and Lucy hadn’t crashed and burned due to Jessica’s return, they’d have had both. And Jessica was many things she couldn’t fully examine yet because it hurt too much, but obviously she could hold her own in the timestream too. Lucy and Garcia now--yeah, hard to tell with those two, given they a lot under wraps. It felt more like they were going by Victorian rules than anything, and she half expected him to ask Lucy if he could call on her in the parlor someday and maybe hold her hand. But if that wasn’t a thing, it would be, and they’d have both the Lifeboat and each other. 

She should be able to have both too. She’d survived three years on her own, in the past, without any of them. She was their primary pilot now, even as she and Connor would train the others to be able to fill the gap. Much as she loved Rufus, much as she’d fight to bring him back to her and never, ever let him go again, she knew one thing with bone-deep certainty. She’d heard George playing “The Girl I Left Behind Me” plinking away on the piano keys often enough, heard miners and gamblers and merchants and sailors all nostalgically sniffling for that woman they loved, and they sold drinks like crazy with that song because nothing needed booze like men soaking in wistful nostalgia. All those women left behind, and their men thinking only of them as their Penelope, a goal, a symbol, a home, never imagining those women’s capabilities and dreams and lives.

She’d had enough of the cotton wool. Enough of nothing much changing between 1888 and 2018 in some ways. No damn way she could undo what she’d become, and accept being safe and separate. No damn way she could stand by the console and watch Rufus climb in that hatch again, shutting her out of the trip and that part of his life. Waiting interminable hours, sometimes several days, not sure if he would return that time. No, they would go together in the Lifeboat once they saved him, or Rufus wouldn’t go at all.

“Jiya,” she snapped back to reality, hearing Connor’s voice. Looked over to see him smiling at her with an expression of that combined a kid about to open a particularly mysterious and wonderful birthday present, and the gambler’s tight, edged grin of almost feral delight at playing the odds and testing fate. “Want to boot her up and do the honors?”

“I suppose there’s no point in our backing off,” Garcia said dryly, shoving his hands into his jeans pockets, “given we’d have to go a few miles out to not be vaporized.”

“Can’t be much hotter than it is,” Wyatt wisecracked. “It’s still over a hundred degrees in the shade here. Though at least out here the humidity’s gone.”

“My math is sound,” Connor replied, completely unruffled. “And clearly Anthony got it done, so all it took was Jiya and I trying to reconstruct his reasoning. And Jiya was clever enough to figure out the tracker for the Mothership, so...” He glanced over his shoulder and threw Garcia a sidelong expression. “Did you run five miles away when Anthony installed the battery in the Mothership, do tell? I’m guessing not.” Garcia shrugged awkwardly, giving a sheepish smile. “Well, then, quit your whining and trust in our work,” he jerked a thumb towards Jiya.

Lucy snickered at that, and Jiya climbed the stairs, clicked the switches to turn the console on. The lights flickered for only a moment, then surged to life, and she watched the screens as the boot sequence begun. “We’re a go,” she shouted over her shoulder, filled with the heady thrill of discovery and accomplishment. Helping build and pilot a time machine, now upgraded with a plutonium battery. Heck of a resume builder, if only she could ever talk about any of it.

“Back to Gettysburg, then,” Lucy said. From the way none of them looked around too much, they wouldn’t miss the Holiday Inn in Pahrump where they’d been living for the past two and a half weeks. Though she had to admit the pool was nice after a long days’ work. But it meant driving every morning to this rusty old warehouse where the Lifeboat and their unearthed plutonium treasure waited, plus more parts for Lifeboat work shipped in by Denise, holding down the fort back in Gettysburg. They’d worked out Lucy’s suggested training schedule, but the unspoken agreement was that when there was delicate radioactive material hanging around, best to get that stabilized and installed first before worrying about learning other things. Survival before survival skills. So other three kept working on the regular repairs and upgrades under her and Connor’s direction, while the two of them wrestled with the atomic battery problem. She wished they’d had Anthony’s expertise on this, since he was far more tapped in on nuclear tech than her or Connor, but it looked like they’d gotten it done.

She stood up from where she’d bent over the console and turned, surveying the interior with pride. Almost done with all the replacement work to undo the century-plus of wear, given they’d all pitched in so feverishly to get it done. Wyatt’s mechanic skills, Garcia’s growing up tinkering alongside an engineering mother, and Lucy’s eagerness to get her hands dirty and learn releasing a surprisingly capability, had helped make it happen. A limitless battery and six seats now, and it left them all crammed in as miserably tight as any economy airline. They’d likely have their knees jammed up against each other, especially with as ridiculously tall as Garcia was. It also left them virtually no room for any kind of cargo. The Lifeboat once had been Mason Industries’ lesser-appreciated baby, the Wall-E to the EVE. But this new Lifeboat, almost ready to start the Lifeline upgrade, belonged to all of them now, every single scrap of material and computer code a labor of love and determination. 

“I’ll tell Denise we’re on our way, and have her call someone to get the Jeep,” Garcia said, pulling out his cell phone, and pulling his sunglasses down off his forehead to cover his eyes, heading towards the door to step out into the blazing white-hot Nevada sun.

Connor stood at the foot of the stairs already, handing Jiya some of their tools and blueprints, ready to transport. The rest would have to get packed and ship back to Gettysburg. “What are they going to think about the fact that we totally vanished and left a government vehicle?” Lucy asked.

Garcia’s lips twitched into a smirk. “They’re federal agents. They won’t ask. Probably figured we either got the next stage of the mission to pick us up here, to help cover our tracks. Or maybe if they’re more dramatically inclined, they’ll imagine we got a helicopter ride out.”

“You’d know drama,” Wyatt snarked. But some of the sharpness from before was missing. She still couldn’t fully trust him yet, but he’d curbed most of his petty crap on the Vegas mission, and she’d admit it had been good to have him there the last few weeks, pitching in and doing the work, almost puppyish in his eagerness, rather than acting like an awkward angry black raincloud none of them knew how to handle. 

“Well, hey, someone’s got to give this team some style,” Garcia quipped, holding his phone to his ear, and ducking out the door. Lucy’s eyes followed him, and Jiya wondered if she even realized the small smile on her lips. 

Two hours later, everything packed into the Lifeboat or else securely left in Pelican cases ready for a freight pick-up by Denise’s DHS counterparts, they crammed into the Lifeboat. With five people including Connor, it still involved its share of knees bumping, elbows pulled tightly in, and the like. She couldn’t help but be glad that the pilot’s seat facing the console gave her more breathing room than the rest of them, but couldn’t resist, “Bet you’re all looking forward to piloting to get a little extra space.” 

The jump back to Gettysburg went smoothly, and as they landed and her ears popped and her stomach lurched, the alarm sounded, and her eyes went to the screen tracking the Mothership’s jumps. “Here we go again,” she muttered, typed in the query and ran the tracker. “Los Angeles. October 10th, 1918.”

“Lucy?” Garcia asked her, voice calm.

Jiya could practically hear the gears in Lucy’s mind turning. “Well, the armistice to end World War One wasn’t until November 11th. Not really germane to Los Angeles, though. There’s the film industry, of course, which is just getting off the ground at that point…I’ve got nothing specific, though.”

“Hey, Flynn, wanna draw us another doodle for the fridge?”

“So art isn’t my chief talent.”

“Guess we go and figure it out.” 

“I do think we ought to unpack,” Connor pointed out, and Jiya looked over her shoulder to see him indicating the cargo they’d managed to cram in. 

“Coming with us on this one, Connor?” Lucy asked. 

“You lot won’t let up until I do, will you?”

“Nope,” Jiya said. “Once you’ve traveled back in time, you’re officially on the roster.”

“Hollywood again?” Wyatt said, sounding like he’d rather face a firing squad. Lucy made a sort of strangled noise, and given what happened between her and Wyatt the last time they’d traveled there, Jiya couldn’t blame her for the awkwardness. 

Connor, meanwhile, had obviously started warming to the idea. “Well, I suppose Hollywood in the silent era could be quite the interesting trip, although the movie industry is still in downtown Los Angeles at that point, not Hollywood proper. But Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, Theda Bara…” 

“Sounds like someone knows his Hollywood history,” Wyatt pointed out. “What have you got?”

“If it was 1915, I’d say Emma would perhaps be there to make ‘Birth of a Nation’ even more incredibly racist than it was.” Connor’s snort of derision somehow managed to sound impressively and politely British in its condescension. “Though how to go beyond noble Ku Klux Klansmen saving the day and rescuing white women from the rapacious clutches of sex-crazed black men, I really can’t imagine.”

“It did lead to a resurgence of the Klan,” Lucy said grimly, “and helped cement the Lost Cause myth of a valiant South fighting for state’s rights as a public narrative rather than a dirty little secret. Without ‘Birth of a Nation’, and without it being as insanely popular as it was, you have to wonder if the next fifty years of civil rights struggle would have turned out quite as they did.” 

“So maybe Emma wants to keep a bad thing rolling with another KKK recruitment film. Great.” She flicked the switch to pop the hatch, and unfastened her harness, turned to see Denise through the round porthole of the open hatch. 

“I see you’re on call already,” Denise called in to them.

“Offload, sit your butts back down, and let’s go. If we don’t know what Emma wants, the sooner we get there, the better, especially now that we have this battery and it apparently works.” She glanced over at Garcia. “And yes, fine. We’ll get there an hour or two before the Mothership.”

“Thank you,” he said with as dramatic and flourishing a bow as he could manage in the cramped space, and without bowling Lucy over. It took only five minutes to hurriedly offload the Lifeboat, grab a few things, and she punched in the coordinates and jumped.

Looking down on the town from the hills where the Hollywood sign would stand a few years later, Los Angeles in 1918 was a lot lower, quieter, and more green than she was used to seeing. Buildings of maybe ten stories or so, but the towering castles of glass and steel of modern day weren’t there. Plenty of cars, but the traffic nightmare wasn’t there quite yet like she was used to seeing whenever she used to go visit college friends down in LA. But it wasn’t the rough quasi-frontier status she’d seen in San Francisco in the 1880’s either--a weird intermediate stage, as if she’d watched California grow up, becoming bigger and bolder like a noisy, energetic kid. 

Two hours later, in an alley behind Bullock’s department store, they took turns keeping watch and hurriedly pulling on the last of the clothes Lucy and Wyatt had obtained in shifts over the last thirty minutes. “I still don’t get why we’re the designated shoplifters,” Wyatt complained, shrugging up his suspenders.

“It’s 1918, Connor and I are very definitely not white, and Garcia attracts too much attention,” Jiya jerked a thumb towards him. “He _looks_ like trouble, he’s big enough he stands out in a crowd, plus he’s got the accent. So yes, we point you two towards things, and you become the designated innocuous white American shoplifters.” Nobody would look twice at Lucy, but if Jiya leaned in too closely towards a hat, she could sense the staff hovering. And she’d managed to slip a few things in her pocket--nimble card-dealer’s hands and all--but trying to sneak off with a pair of shoes was beyond her. Lucy, in contrast, managed to walk off wearing a cloche hat right on her head, a smart golden yellow suit with black trim off the rack, and boots stuffed in a handbag she’d grabbed among other things, and nobody batted an eye. “Problem with that?”

“No objections from me,” Garcia answered cheerfully, knotting a burgundy and black striped tie and settling it beneath his shirt collar. “Though hey, I’ll pitch in my fair share. I always managed to get my own stuff before I joined this band of misfits. I certainly didn’t have Connor’s magical costume warehouse.”

Wyatt rolled his eyes. “Here I figured you’d just shot people for their clothes.”

“Trying to find a man my size randomly walking down the street isn’t easy. Besides, bullet holes and bloodstains in clothes attract a little too much attention,” Garcia’s reply arrived as Jiya expected, completely deadpan. 

“Great. Then you’re on shoplifting duty too next time,” Wyatt replied.

“Jiya, anything?” Lucy asked, shooting her a hopeful glance.

Shrugging on the poison-green jacket of her own suit, settling her shoulders into it and fastening the brooch at her throat, grateful to not be wearing a corset, she shook her head. “It’s...not clear. It’s always jumbled after a jump, and we just did two right in a row. Must be something to do with neurological changes of time travel?” She didn’t miss the nervous glances they all exchanged, imagining their own brains getting scrambled. “Plus the closer I am to that past, the more the visions seem to splinter. It’s like looking at those Impressionist paintings that are all tiny dots of paint up close. You need to step back to see it.” It took her the better part of three years to piece together the narrative in the Bison Horn, bit by bit, because she was too close to it at that point. “A big party at someone’s mansion. Emma’s there. Talking to a man, kind of flirting with him, but I don’t know who he is.” She risked looking over at Wyatt. “Jessica’s there too.”

He flinched as though Jiya struck him, mouth tightening into a grimace of pain, but recovered rapidly. He nodded once, stiffly, as if his head were a puppet’s jerked up and down by a string. “All right then.”

Walking down the street, it seemed like a big party was the last thing on peoples’ minds. “Just me, or does it seem awfully quiet for LA, even for lower historical population?” She nodded across the street towards a couple with what looked like muslin tied around their mouths and noses. “Well, that’s not fashion. We used to see that look in Chinatown when they’d clean out a house where people died of disease.” Though the propaganda that the Chinese basically carried every disease under the sun and spread it like wildfire was bullshit. The forced population density hadn’t helped, no, but it wasn’t like they were any less clean than any other ethnic group out there. Frankly, she’d had much smellier and dirtier white men in the saloon.

Lucy paused, nodding to a poster pasted to the brick wall, a notice in dramatic bold black font from the Los Angeles Public Health Commission about anti-influenza measures. “This might explain it. Discouraging public gatherings. Discouraging filmmaking until the crisis has passed--well, that’s unique here. Keeping funerals to families only, calling off wedding receptions. Schools closing. Masks suggested. Mandatory quarantine of infected people.” She nodded, as if to herself. “LA did take it seriously and reacted quickly, so they had one of the lowest fatality rates of the flu pandemic, especially given they got a couple hundred infected sailors dumped on their docks only a few weeks ago. Guess everyone’s staying home.”

The rest of them looked taken aback, as if to see in an era with cars and electric lights that something so devastating could happen in America. Given Jiya had seen cholera, dysentery and the like close up, she was harder to shock. “They’re frightened,” Garcia said finally, turning away from the notice to scan up and down the lonely streets. “America may have mostly missed the hammer of the war, but they still get hit by this. A disease that kills supposedly the fittest among them seems to go against every bit of scientific knowledge advanced in the past fifty years. It must seem like some kind of divine retribution.”

“Twenty to forty-five was the age group most at risk, yes,” Lucy replied, a bleak note entering her voice. “Maybe fifty million dead worldwide. Almost 700,000 Americans. It burned through the country like wildfire, and then vanished in a matter of a couple of months. And we’re fitter than people for our age in almost any time pre-1950, so that probably shifts our clock a bit anyway.”

“Unfortunately I doubt that my being a grand old fifty-one would have increased my chances over you young things anyway,” Connor said with dry understatement. “And as much as you complained about risking typhus from 1733, at least that was curable with antibiotics. A virus? Might as well be up against bloody Ebola. We’ll all have to be very careful.”

“Could she be trying to make the flu worse somehow? Or, I dunno, maybe _introduce_ some Ebola into the equation?”

“It’s not like you can just buy some Ebola from Amazon, Wyatt. That stuff’s locked up tight at the CDC. And every single Federal agency would have heard about the theft of any filovirus sample, because they’d know it would be used as a terrorist attack,” Garcia answered, shaking his head. 

Jiya added, “And if she’d traveled to get an _in situ_ sample from Africa back in the ‘70’s or ‘80’s from a victim, we’d have flagged the Lifeboat trip. Mothership hasn’t budged since we beat them to the punch in Vegas.” 

“It’d be hard to make the flu worse given there are health measures already being put in place, and if she was going to do that, I’d have expected her to go back further in the pandemic. We’re already weeks into it. The panic’s setting in and the bodies are piling up,” Lucy told them.

“Then let’s figure out what Rittenhouse is after and then get the hell out of Dodge,” Wyatt replied, though there was an odd note in his voice that Jiya couldn’t quite place.

Walking down Broadway, seeing the giant movie theaters there all advertising their films for a nickel, Connor’s eyes lit up again, pointing towards Million Dollar Theater, a towering hulk of a theater that must have had thousands of seats, and either apartment or office space soared stories above the marquee. “Oh my God. ‘Salomé’, starring Theda Bara. America’s first film sexpot.” He gestured to another. “‘On the Quiet’ with John Barrymore. Drew’s his granddaughter, you know. Latest generation of an acting dynasty. Both of those films are considered lost. I have to wonder how many of these films playing today,” he waved a hand up and down the avenue, “are gone forever?”

“What happened to them?” she asked. Shrugged a little awkwardly, admitting, “I kind of predated movies there, so…don’t look at me for that one.” 

“The nitrate-based film they used often degraded badly to the point it fell apart, and it was an incredible fire hazard to boot. Several vault fires over the years took out entire collections. For those that survived that, the studios destroyed a lot of them deliberately after talkies came in late in the ‘20’s,” Connor replied, taking his hat in his hands, spinning it around in an idle gesture, eyes still scanning the marquees with the look of a starving man offered a banquet. “Took up so much storage space, and so the studio heads figured they were the past. Much like we destroyed our floppy disks when CDs and then flash drives came into being. Outdated technology.” Still sounding agitated, he shook his head. “But what they destroyed was so much _art_ , not simply a technological marvel the world had surpassed. 90 percent of silent films will never see the light of day again. It would be like...like throwing the majority of the canvases of the Old Masters onto a bonfire. Or consigning the bulk of Shakespeare to a watery grave with only a few vague references and quotes left.”

Connor was the quintessential tech nerd, yes, but she’d seen in her years at Mason Industries that there was something of the soul of the artist in him too. Should have figured it from his love of blues and Dixieland jazz, and old--truly old, apparently--Hollywood films. Clapping his hat back on his head, he waved towards another one. “My. _There’s_ something truly special.”

She looked where Connor indicated, reading the marquee’s black lettering. “‘His Birthright’, starring Sessue Hayakawa,” Wyatt read it aloud .

“It’s _Ses-shu_ , you sad philistine, not _Ses-su_.” 

“Hayakawa. Japanese?” Garcia asked, sounding surprised. “Given the number of actors with Asian heritage getting top billing in Hollywood is, what, zero in 2018, that’s...unexpected in 1918?”

“Oh, very good.” Connor got that look on his face that Jiya recognized from meetings and pitch sessions as him being about ready to launch into an excited ramble of something he was truly passionate about, and needed to tell the world before his brain exploded from it. “Hollywood’s very own foreign heartthrob, paved the way for Rudolph Valentino a few years later. Studied economics in Chicago, and never quite made it back to Japan when he got to LA and found acting. Came out of nowhere three years ago playing a dangerous seducer with ‘The Cheat’, and audiences, and white women in particular, went absolutely wild for the man. He played villains, yes, but also carved out quite the unusual niche playing the safely Americanizing Asian man, almost always chastely pining for a white woman, and sacrificing his love in the end to see her happily with a white man. Can’t transgress the racial taboos, now can we? But he was _sensuous_ , Sessue Hayakawa. They made him a sex symbol, before the image of Asian men was effectively neutered after World War II. Made a salary second only to Chaplin, commanded artistic control of his career, founded his own production studio--Haworth--drove a gold-plated Pierce Arrow, married a Japanese actress he met in his stage days, and threw quite delightfully huge parties at their mansion, which apparently literally looked like a castle. It’s said he joked that having stocked up before Prohibition hit that he owed his social life to his ample liquor supply.”

Leaning over to Lucy, she muttered, “Sounds like Connor has an idol.” Flashy car, impressive mansion, wild parties, sex symbol, ample liquor supply, life fast and live it up? Yeah, that about fit the bill for Connor Mason’s blueprint for life.

“That, and a huge crush,” Lucy whispered back with a giggle. “It’s not just white women, clearly.” She couldn’t help but snicker in return, but it was amazing seeing Connor gushing over someone like this. Widely known and acknowledged at Mason Industries that Connor’s sexual tastes cheerfully encompassed a wide range, though his employees were off limits as he kept a strict rule that amounted to _don’t shit where you eat_ for himself. Which, given he was the boss and had that power, avoided a load of awkwardness for everyone. She’d seen him flirtatious at meetings and a few cocktail parties with collaborators and vendors and government employees, and Connor was smooth as glass there. But she wasn’t sure she’d ever seen him like this, all puppy-like and giddy about someone. Kind of adorable, actually. 

She had to ask. “Was he like this with Robert Johnson?”

“No, I think he only wanted to worship Johnson as a total blues god. I’m...pretty sure he actually wouldn’t kick Hayakawa out of bed for eating crackers.”

“Well, if he’s truly as sexy as that, I’m not sure I would either,” came the faintly accented words drawled from behind them. 

How such a big man could move that quietly, Jiya had no idea. “Garcia!” Lucy turned around from where he’d sneaked behind on them and leaned down to eavesdrop, pushing against his shoulder and moving him maybe an inch. “You’re impossible,” but she was laughing as she said it. Jiya couldn’t help but look at Wyatt, seeing him look at the two of them with a pointedly blank expression. He probably would have done well at the Bison Horn with a poker face like that.

Garcia grinned back at her, taking her hand from his shoulder, and holding it a fraction of a second too long before dropping it. Well. That really was happening? She couldn’t help but be happy for Lucy, given what a nightmare she’d been in after the last time the team went to Hollywood, and Jessica came back. One night with someone she’d loved and then she got dropped flat on her ass by fate and Rittenhouse. Maybe even Garcia had come to a place where he’d earned the idea of hope for a happier future. But the pang of wistful envy hit her all the same. She remembered those early days, that awkward but sweet and excited dance of _So...we’re actually doing this?_ Remembered how he’d bought her flowers after their first night together, a bouquet of bright tiger lilies accompanied by a Milky Way, and the bashful look on his face at work all day long, when he couldn’t stop looking over at her and smiling. Nervously asking if he could see her again in the breakroom, _It didn’t suck, did it? You can tell me if it did. Aside from you rolling over on the PS4 controller before we took it to the bedroom, and I am sorry about that, I can only imagine that’s gotta leave some weird bruises? But I mean, it’d been a while for me, and...and...Jiya, you’re so incredible. So if it wasn’t good, I swear I can ma…_ She’d leaned in to kiss him to shut the rambling up. She wished now she’d saved one of those tiger lillies and dried it. Wished she’d given in and watched the entirety of ALF or MacGuyver with him and just loved him for his sometimes exasperating ‘80’s nerdery that could complement or clash with her own fantasy and sci fi nerdery. Wished she’d fixed more of the moments with him in her mind as photographs, vivid and sharp, rather than assuming there would be so many. 

“So we can stand here like it’s high noon and we’re waiting for a gunfight,” Wyatt’s tone turned impatient and terse, “or we can keep working to figure out what’s going on here.”

“Might be nice to just settle things with Emma with a duel,” Garcia quipped. “Take Rittenhouse down in, mm, five minutes?”

“Don’t you dare,” Lucy told him. “Besides, she’s not stupid enough to go for that.”

“No,” Jiya said, the humor leaving the situation for her in remembering the figure stepping out from the shadows, a nightmare suddenly given human form as Emma sniping at them from across the street. “She’s not that stupid.”

Looked like she knew how to kill a moment, as they all shut up abruptly, exchanging suddenly uncertain glances. Reminded that they weren’t here to gush over history, but to save it, and Emma and Jessica both were out there somewhere, and they had no clue of what terror they wanted to unleash on the world. “So we’re an hour ahead of Rittenhouse, but a few steps behind,” she said, unable to help the grim edge to her voice. “Time to get back to reality.”

Heading down the street, shoulder to shoulder, she couldn’t help but feel like they were in a Western anyway. Blame her living in the 1880s, blame being in Los Angeles and walking past all the over the top movie palaces. All it needed was some tumbleweeds and Enrico Morricone’s soundtrack. “Split up and start talking to people, figure out what’s going on?” Lucy suggested. “Maybe they’re filming something important.”

Wyatt looked at her and flinched like he worried she’d strangle him, looked at Garcia with the dramatically martyred expression of preferring to be stripped, covered in honey, and tied to a fire ant hill, and barely glanced at Lucy, his eyes skating over her like she was a ghostly spectre rather than a flesh and blood woman irritatedly adjusting her jacket and tugging how it lay over her hips. Obvious where that was going: Wyatt picked Connor as the option least likely to murder or criticize him right now. “Guess I’m your third wheel,” she told Garcia and Lucy, deciding to make it a joke.

Asking shopkeepers, street vendors, and the like, nobody seemed to know anything much about anything dramatic. Aside from the worries about the flu, and the pending end of the war, nothing special seemed to be happening. A blue mood hung over the city, people worried for their health, for their jobs given the nascent film industry which could be killed off by being shut down for months or even years in the face of a pandemic. Maybe it wasn’t as devastated as the destroyed lives overseas cut to ribbons by four years of unthinkable war, but the mood was about as pessimistic as she’d ever seen. Grumpy, hungry, and frustrated, they trudged back to the Million Dollar an hour later by Garcia’s watch--one of her little pickpocket projects in Bullock’s--to meet up with Wyatt and Connor. By the expression on her former boss’ face, they’d had better luck.

“Found something?” Garcia asked, obviously picking up on it too.

“Found a fellow who was filming as an extra in Lillian Gish’s latest who told me that, given the public health rumors, the Hayakawas are holding a get-together tonight at their home. Corner of Franklin and Argyle. One last hurrah in the face of the hurricane, as it were. Jiya said she saw a party, so that fits. I also heard some industry folks will be there, brushing elbows of course, but also working. Planning to film some party scenes and the like too, in case it’s--well, they’re wondering if it may be rather a long while until the cameras can roll again.”

“The pandemic burns itself out in a couple of months,” Lucy answered. “The worst will be over by Thanksgiving.”

“It can feel like an eternity when it’s one of the Four Horsemen suddenly riding wild through your home. Nothing familiar or safe anymore. Your family, your life, your way of life, and everything you know at risk,” Garcia said, his voice oddly soft. “And six weeks is more than enough to devastate everything.” From the way he avoided all their eyes, very suddenly interested in a lamppost, he had his share of experience with that. She’d been an infant when Yugoslavia broke up, but she’d been back to Lebanon with her parents, been into Syria before it totally went to hell, and seen some of the devastation wrought there. Closer than an American tourist or soldier, yes, but it didn’t break her heart and soul the way quite the way it had for those who actually lived there, who had loved and raised and buried families, often for generations. Seeing home suddenly turned into a wasteland with the speed of wildfire and fearing it would never, ever be OK again--yes, there had to be a primal terror to that.

“Four Horsemen--” Wyatt mused.

“Plague, famine, war, and death.” Seeing the looks her way, she couldn’t help saying snarkily, “Seriously? A Muslim shouldn’t know about the Four Horsemen? It’s in comics and video games and everything else. It’s pure pop culture, not religion. I’m pretty sure they’re even bosses in D’n’D.”

“Hey, I knew it too. I listen to Johnny Cash,” Wyatt said defensively.

“If they’re not D’n’D bosses, they should be. These people don’t know that it’ll be that short, though,” Connor said. “And Garcia’s right. Short or not, to their minds, something this deadly, this widespread--it rather calls up a mortal terror of something like the good old Black Death, doesn’t it? They’re afraid it’ll last for years.”

“Let’s just hope Rittenhouse decides never to play around with that one.” Wyatt pushed up the brim of his bowler. “OK, so aside from fulfilling a life dream of his to meet this guy, Connor thinks maybe that’s the most likely target.”

“It makes sense,” Lucy replied, chin in her hand, and Jiya could see her eyes light up. “I mean, if Hayakawa’s house is the most happening place in town tonight, there should be some pretty important bigwigs in the industry or LA in general. Plenty of likely targets for Rittenhouse, if we can only figure out the angle. 

“My guess?” Connor said, hesitating slightly, but then his face setting into lines of greater confidence.

“Have at it,” Wyatt told him, gesturing for him to go on.

“Before this, you had to go to the city for a theater, or hope for a traveling troupe to come to your particular backwater. Any small town could build a theater and get a copy of film reel, and charge a nickel for people to come in and experience it. It--look, film was a revelation, a _revolution_. Fictional stories that shaped how people saw things. News, both the undeniable truth of the images, but also the spin of the journalism. Movies became television became the Internet. We live in that world still, don’t we? Because this is the birth of the world of mass media at every person’s fingertips. Film truly captured the world for anyone to see, and to be influenced by what they saw and how it was edited and presented.”

“And if Rittenhouse may well want to control some of that. If they get a foot in the elevator door to hold it so they can hop in on the ground floor,” Lucy’s words came slowly, reluctantly, “that could be catastrophic.”

“The wide and wonderful world of Rittenpropaganda brought to all of America--hell, all of the world. Great.” Garcia sighed, crossing his arms over his chest. “I did say Emma would likely go big. Sometimes I hate being right.”

“Don’t get used to it,” Wyatt shot back. 

Garcia only rolled his eyes and gestured to Lucy as if telling her to get them back on track. Jiya stepped back, seeing the trolley moving its way along the broad avenue, the conductor calling the stop in a loud bark. 

“OK, so we need to get into that party and figure out who their target, or targets, might be. Do we need to find a way to get invitations or...or sneak in as waitstaff, or--”

“Darling,” Connor told her, beaming, “to an event like this, apparently one simply _shows up_ and joins the fun.” He looked them over, gesturing a hand to his own charcoal grey three-piece suit and peacock-green tie. “We’ll definitely all need a change of clothes, though. Evening attire, after all.”

“Shoplifting, round 2,” Wyatt said, though in her opinion, him complaining about it was bullshit. She could see how some part of him thrilled at the illicit risk and challenge of it. Rufus told her that Wyatt had been a cross-border bootlegger as a teenager. She could imagine it. “Seriously, we’d better make sure we keep what we already got, though.”

“Might as well bring these back to the Lifeboat too and continue building the wardrobe,” Connor agreed. “I’d also suggest we hit up somewhere besides Bullock’s this time. Now, we’ve got, say...two hours or so to get proper evening clothes.”

“Aw, look at you, second mission and you’ve come so far already,” Garcia wisecracked, reaching out and clapping Connor on the shoulder. “Lucy and I can work on clothes with Jiya’s help.”

“I’d suggest maybe we try to pop an alleyway door this time into somewhere selling evening clothes,” Wyatt mused. Lucy reached up, plucking what looked like a bobby pin from the band of her black cloche, and held it between her fingertips, hand outstretched to Wyatt. He laughed at that, reaching out and taking it. “Came prepared, huh? Nice.”

“You really should start carrying your own paperclips or whatever, though,” Lucy answered him, lips curving up briefly in a smile nonetheless. “Houdini wouldn’t rely on anyone else for his picks, you know.” She looked over at Garcia, raising an eyebrow. “And yes, knockouts of clerks are fine if needed, but let’s try to avoid even that.”

“Ah, c’mon. I can do it without even giving them a concussion. The hours people have to work in this era, they might _welcome_ a nap they don’t have to be blamed for taking.”

“Garcia.” Garcia, unsurprisingly, broke first, looking away and shrugging in acceptance of Lucy’s stern insistence. Jiya felt fairly certain they all knew who was the boss in that partnership, and that he didn’t even seem to mind it.

“Fine. After that bit of you breaking and us entering, Wyatt, want to take Connor and steal us a car?” Garcia waggled his eyebrows. “Might as well corrupt Connor thoroughly into our glamorous life of petty crime.”

Wyatt flipped a jaunty two-fingered salute from his brow. “Much easier in the ‘30’s, though. Key ignition and they’re also dumb enough to leave the keys in the car. 1918? Slow speed getaway too. A 1910’s Model T tops out at like forty, maybe forty-five miles an hour.”

“Seventy kilometers,” Connor couldn’t help but correct. Wyatt shot him a look. “Yes, right, it’s historically accurate to use miles.” He grimaced, raising his left index finger. “Accepted, but for the sake of my sanity as a Briton and a scientist: on this, Americans are stubborn backwards asses, because the metric system makes so much more sense.”

“Don’t look at me, Croatia’s been metric for over a century, and my mother was an engineer besides,” Garcia answered with a shrug. "All right, let’s have fun, and not get arrested.” There was a sudden sharp edge to his smile. “I don’t recommend it.”


	12. 3x03: Children of the Dragon (Jessica/Lucy: Los Angeles, California, October 1918)

Jessica watched as the taxi pulled up at the address Emma had given. In the southern California autumn dusk, the castle-like edifice of the house, wrought in pale stone, looked even more like something from a dream or a fairy tale. The Hayakawas--Hayakawa and Aoki, anyway, since apparently she hadn’t taken his name--must have been a bit romantic. Wholly Westernizing too, given it wasn’t a Japanese-style castle. She’d never been. Never been out of the country except a few brief runs to Mexico as a teen, despite Wyatt promising they’d take a trip somewhere all these years, but she’d seen the pictures, the movies, dreamed her own dreams.

“So this is it,” she said, getting out of the cab, and letting Emma pay and tip the cabbie. She still felt like such a fish out of water on these time travel missions, realizing with reluctance how dependent she was on Emma for so much information and leadership. What money actually bought, what the money looked like in that time period, how to dress, how to act, what the politics and issues and the rest were all like. Emma had her plans, and she usually asked Jessica about some of the tactical stuff--especially about how to try to stay a few steps ahead of the Lifeboat team--but she never gave Jessica more information than was necessary, and usually doled it out, teaspoon by teaspoon, once they were already there.

The suspicion started in New York with the Zenger mission, but it was really Vegas and now here, trying to do more than just pass for a few hours to help activate an in-place sleeper and blast off back to 2018, that it showed up more and more. But maybe she was only being paranoid. Wyatt had made it hard to trust or believe in anyone, hadn’t he? 

The seed sprouted, and she couldn’t ignore the vines of it slowly growing and curling their way around her mind, tightening down. Emma seemed to like holding the strings on being able to hack it in that historical period, keep Jessica just that little bit dependent, following a step behind like a good underling. It gave off the uncomfortable reminder of Wyatt for all those years insisting that Jessica shouldn’t worry about it, that he had it handled, that he’d take care of her, grinning and calling her _babe_ with a sweet smile. And her, young and in love and naive, unable or unwilling to stand up for herself and say _I want to take care of it. I want to be capable of it. Why are you so threatened by me wanting to be able to do stuff for myself?_

 _Maybe she’s just adjusting to being in charge still. I mean, look how encouraging she is to Darla and Matt. And she lived alone for twelve years. She’s just not used to thinking about explaining to other people, is she? She’s an engineer, not a teacher. Not like Lucy is._ She couldn’t help but think snarkily, _She’d better get used to explaining and thinking about other people, because next winter she’s gonna have a baby. And I’m not taking care of her kid for her and being left behind._

Standing on the curb in her ice-blue evening dress, secretly enjoying the click and sway of the fringe of silver beads reminding her of icicles, glad for the folds of fabric around her midriff that hid the baby bump, she couldn’t help but feel a stab of worry. “The influenza,” she asked Emma softly, leaning in close as the cab drove off. “I mean...it’s not dangerous when you’re pregnant, is it?” She’d learned in history class back in the day how deadly the 1918 flu was to people their age, and she had to think anything that devastating could cause miscarriage. Wyatt and the rest of them probably thought she’d done it deliberately. She hadn’t. They’d gotten stupidly careless with the condoms, because for a while, she’d been as caught up in the idea of a second chance as him, and honestly, at thirty-five she’d probably unconsciously figured that if it came up, they’d have to actually seriously try for a baby for a while before it happened. Looked like she and Emma were both still fertile Myrtles, as her Gran Rosita would say. 

She’d wanted so desperately to believe in Wyatt, in his claims of being so different from the deadbeat asshole she wanted to divorce. And maybe he was. He was sweeter, more anxious to please, more affectionate. But he wasn’t different enough. He still stared at Lucy jealously, he still kept secrets, kept Jessica out of things, tried to keep her to that bunker and waiting on his comings and goings as usual. Made it clear that no, he wasn’t _all in_ after all. Unexpected as the baby was, complicated as it made things, she still didn’t want to lose it. 

“Probably no more dangerous than time travel around people with guns,” Emma said dryly.

Which didn’t really answer the question, but she recognized a dismissal when she heard one, and shut her mouth. “So they’re banning public gatherings tomorrow.”

“Yep. Wrote the public health ordinance today, in fact.” She nodded towards the bright lights of the Hayakawa castle. “So this is the perfect chance to catch people partying and living it up. Every big name in movies should probably be here tonight.”

“And we’re looking for...Adolph Zukor. The head of Paramount.” She remembered the face from the photograph Emma pulled up on her phone: pleasantly bland features, a high forehead due to receding dark hair. 

“Head of Famous Players-Lasky at this point,” Emma corrected her, “but yeah, it’ll become known as Paramount eventually. They are and will still be the biggest player in the business--no pun intended on Famous Players--and Zukor’s the brain behind it all. Signing the biggest stars and everything. I’m sure he’ll be here tonight to bask in the glow of the stars he has, and probably try to sign some new talent if he can.”

“And what’s our deal?” Jessica watched as what seemed like a constant stream of people kept heading into the house, and for an absurd moment she wanted it to be like a cartoon and see the house start to expand like a balloon, pushed out at the seams. Obviously, yes, this would be quite the party tonight.

“Everyone thinks things were so prim right now. There was a move to clean things up, and Prohibition was a really dumb move, but those reformers did want to make things better in general. But the movie industry of the time made rock stars of the ‘70’s look like amateurs. Sex, drugs, booze, you name it. Bad enough that five scandals hit Paramount in a few years and made everyone in Hollywood shut up and say ‘yes sir’ to internal policing and censorship of both the stars and the movies Between 1920 and 1922, you’ve got Roscoe Arbuckle, one of the biggest names in comedy, literally and figuratively, holding an orgy-slash-party that turned into a rape and manslaughter trial. Seems like it probably didn’t happen, and he was acquitted, but the media circus was crazy. Two famous actor-addicts dead: Olive Thomas apparently either OD’d or committed suicide, and William Reid definitely OD’d. Two big name directors dead with a lot of scandal around their personal lives: William Desmond Taylor, definitely murdered, and Thomas Ince, probably murdered. It’d be like…”

Emma hesitated, obviously still a bit out of touch on movies. Jessica hurried to pick up the slack. ”So it’s like Jack Black put on trial for supposedly killing someone while raping them, Robert Downey Jr. and Lindsay Lohan relapsing and dying of drugs, and Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson killed in sketchy circumstances, all in the space of two years.” Holy hell. She’d heard about the Roaring Twenties, sure, but she’d had no idea things in the movie business were that insane and out of control.

“Exactly. And the hits kept coming throughout the ‘20’s, drugs and STDs and affairs and drunk escapades and early deaths, so Will Hays and the Hays Code march in as of 1930 and demand they clean up the act of both the movies and the people making them.”

“So what are we aiming to do? Warn Zukor about the scandals and give him a chance to course correct? I mean, if he’s in charge, and just letting it happen...”

Emma smiled that fox-like grin of hers. “I’m going to try to clean up the Hollywood cesspit before Hayes can do it, because Zukor’s a pretty naughty boy himself. Exactly how? We’ll see. I’m flexible.” She put an arm around Jessica’s shoulders. “Leave the dirty work to me.” Jessica tamped down the flash of temper at that, trying to not see it as condescending. “You? I need you to keep an eye out for Flynn’s team, and try to keep them distracted for me. Give them a good chase.”

All right, so she did have her purpose here, and it was important. _Yeah, sure, if they don’t murder me on sight. Though they’ll definitely murder you, so I guess it’s better that I do it._ That icy sliver of doubt worked its way in deeper, churning her stomach. But there was no other path now. No way out. She tried to smile, squaring her shoulders. “All right, let’s go get this party started.” No drinking for either of them, clearly, but even if that hadn’t been the case, better to not get drunk while out on a mission anyway.

The party was in full swing as they walked in through the front hallway to what must have been a wide open two-story ballroom, a live orchestra on a low stage playing what must have been ragtime music, and she saw white-coated wait staff passing by with trays of drinks. The floor and the balcony above crowded with people already, laughter and conversation blending with the music to make everything loud and intense. Like the 1918 version of a packed club, minus the light show. 

Murmuring a polite refusal to the drinks, she immediately scanned the crowd, looking first for Flynn’s dark features. As tall as the man was, he tended to stick out like a beacon, but so many people packed into the place that it felt like being swept along by the current in a raging packed-tight sea of humanity. Seriously, were there any kind of fire hazard regulations in place in 1918? This had to be a terrible idea. “I don’t see them yet, or Zukor,” she admitted reluctantly, “but I honestly can’t see worth shit in this crowd. I’ll try to get up to the second floor and look from there.”

“I spotted Zukor,” Emma told her, pointing towards another hallway. “I’ll try to get him out in the garden to talk. Keep an eye out for the Mystery Machine gang for me.” She didn’t want to speculate whether Flynn or Wyatt or maybe Connor was the Scooby Doo of the bunch, but it made her chuckle all the same. 

Working her way up the stairs against the crush of people, feeling like a salmon swimming upstream, she couldn’t help a nervous snort of amusement. _Salmon swim upstream to spawn, and then die. Guess I’ve got the spawning part down. Hopefully not the dying._ Her throat and tongue felt unbearably dry, but she didn’t want to ask if there was anything non-alcoholic on offer and call too much attention to herself.

The nagging inconsistencies were starting to pile up in her brain. She’d been told since fourteen about how Rittenhouse was trying so hard to make America a better place. To help stamp out the corruption, the factionalism, the “me first” attitudes that divided rather than united. Bring everyone together. It was so easy to not question it when she’d only been asked to wait and be ready, eager for her chance to be a part of something. Wyatt fought in the Army, and she would help fight for America too when Carol found the right opportunity for her. That was her secret all those years, like a hidden pearl in the oyster slowly biding its time. 

But how were they making America better trying to kill Lincoln? _Everyone’s all about how amazing Lincoln is, but seriously? He started the war,_ Emma had said without blinking. _Three quarters of a million people dead. Slavery would have died out anyway soon enough. It was economically unsustainable. And that war’s left a rift in America even a hundred and fifty years later. Wouldn’t it be better for one man to not start all of it?_

Maybe Emma had a point there. Maybe she had a point with Zukor that if he enabled all this crap, better he not be in control. And maybe with Zenger, Carol, and then Emma, were right that it would have sparked the revolution all the sooner to have a more powerful voice issue the call for free speech. Who the heck had ever heard of John Peter Zenger anyway? Maybe it would have been better from Jefferson or the like.

She could make sense of it in her mind when Emma talked like that, just like she had with Carol for years. But she couldn’t help that odd sensation deep in the pit of her stomach anyway, and it wasn’t the baby kicking. Not yet, anyway. God, if only Wyatt hadn’t screwed all of this up, they could have had a quiet life, kids, so many years ago. But he had to be the big damn hero overseas, and then panic every time she brought up kids, because of his father.

Looking down at the party as she was, seeing Flynn looming above the crowd like a ridiculous giant with Lucy in his wake--of course--she saw with panic that they’d caught Emma. _Oh, shit._ But they couldn’t risk killing her here, and as she watched from above, Emma gave them the slip, heading again towards where she’d apparently seen Zukor. 

She felt the railing vibrate as someone leaned on it next to her, and looked over. Her legs suddenly almost gave way. As if she’d summoned him by thinking of him, there was Wyatt, and she froze. Dressed in a black evening suit, hair combed back with pomade, he looked boyishly charming. Although he somehow managed to make most anything look good. Seeing him this close for the first time since that Chinatown alley, for a moment words failed her. 

“Jess,” he said, giving her a nod. That ridiculous little _ma’am_ cowboy nod he had, that she’d once found so charming, and even now...even now...damn him. 

So she went on the offensive immediately. “I see you brought your new girlfriend.” She couldn’t help the bitterness spilling out from her. “So how long after you got back from Chinatown were you pleading with her to take you back, Wyatt, huh?” He flinched, and she felt the hot vengeful satisfaction of victory, mingled with the rage and sorrow of being proven right about him once again. “Oh my God. You _actually_ did. How long, Wyatt? A week? Two days?” She stepped forward, tilting her gaze up to his. “Did you go back to that bunker and fuck her that same night? Go into her bed and claim that you should share the sorrow?”

His blue eyes flashed steely with rage. “You don’t get to--”

She had to cut him off before he finished, because yes, he was right about Rufus, and the less she thought about him, and Jiya’s grief, the better. But she also wasn’t wrong, and scenting blood, she pressed her advantage. “I get to tell you I’m sick of your lies.”

“Like you should talk about lies,” he snapped. Then he took a deep breath, his white-knuckled grip on the railing easing only with visible effort. “OK. OK. We’re talking about you and me right now, not Rufus. Fine.”

Odd concession from him that it was, she’d take it. “Fine. Then you don’t get to avoid the question this time. How long before you ran back to Lucy again?”

Something in him crumbled. He took a deep breath. “I haven’t slept with Lucy since that one night before I knew you were alive. I swear. And we’re not dating. She’s got something going on with,” he mouth worked in a tight grimace, “Flynn.” 

She noticed he didn’t deny that he’d wanted it, or that maybe he’d tried. Only because Lucy wouldn’t have him, huh? But she could let that go for now. Use it as a barb later if needed. “So what, you want me to come back to you? Be so grateful that you’ll take your Rittenhouse-tainted wife back that I’ll be so small, so quiet, never any trouble to you again?” 

It felt good to go on the offense, even as she knew she was taking a page from his playbook and using the attack to cover her own sins. But she was so tired of giving way for him. “Jess, like I said, let’s talk about us. I want you back. You and,” his eyes flicked down to her stomach, obviously trying to see the bump hidden by the careful folds of fabric, “our baby. I swear. Just...just get away from all this Rittenhouse insanity and come home. Emma doesn’t _care_ about you. She’s just using you. So...come with me. Please. No conditions.”

“You told me that before.”

“I really mean it this time.”

“You’ve said that before too. I’m kind of sick of it.” All around them, the party went on, loud and bold and lively, but it felt like it had faded to a background murmur. Even a woman’s high pitched hyena cackle of laughter barely five feet away barely registered. The two of them might as well have been frozen in their own bubble, outside of the party, outside of time itself. “You know what I think, Wyatt? You’re afraid to be alone. You’ve always needed someone there to love you because you weren’t loved as a kid. You need someone to handle things for you too. If I wasn’t here, the minute you get out of the Army you’d be lost. You’ve had _everything_ handled for you, handed to you, since you were eighteen. Food, clothes, meals, housing, TV access, all of it. Haven’t had to worry about any of it because the military and me were the ones who did it. Who do you think actually does the work of paying the bills? You actually know how much is in our bank account at any given time? Who does the taxes? Buys groceries and cooks? Pays the medical bills that hit an American mailbox while you’re still busy overseas somewhere, and learned how to argue with the insurance company? Who argued with Verizon for two hours while sitting in that bunker while you were off chasing Alice Paul in 1919 about their shitty service to get us out of them raising the rates by forty bucks a month? You know how to do any of that, Wyatt?”

He looked at her, eyes meeting hers. “No. I’ve...” He licked his lips. “I’ve had to think about a lot of things these past couple of months. And maybe I’m not as shitty as the man you were ready to divorce. But I’m not the guy I should be either. Not by a long shot.”

Those were words she could have wished to hear from him in years past, but it felt too easy. “What finally got that through your head?” If he said Lucy, she might throw him off the balcony.

He gave an uneasy, self-conscious snort, reaching up to rub the back of his neck self-consciously. “Flynn. We, ah...talked.”

“So you’re taking romantic advice from a terrorist now. Cool. Guess you two must have finally bonded over the angsty dead wife thing?” It felt good to let loose all the frustration and bile she’d built up over the years, and to see him as he really was, finally admit the bad alongside the good. Why was he letting her get away with it, though? By all right he should have turned tables and thrown Rufus in her face, shut her down, and the fact he didn’t made her almost more afraid than his wrath at the death of his friend would have. Made her wonder if he was serious this time. 

But he’d said before that none of it mattered, that they could start again, that they could forget the past. Wyatt, when he tried, could be so convincing and so charming in the short term. But it never lasted. “Convince me,” she said, feeling both thrilled and ready to throw up at her own daring. “Prove to me this isn’t just you needing to not feel bad about yourself, or so you don’t look bad to everyone else.” 

His brow knit, an almost puppy-like expression of confusion on his face. “How?”

“Show me you’ve changed.” She turned and pushed her way past two women clinging to each other and swaying drunkenly to the music, trying to lose him, sliding through gaps in the crowd as deft as an eel. Holding place, because of course he’d watch the twin staircases at either end of the second floor balcony, she watched him searching for her, crouching down slightly to lose him.

Why hadn’t she told him to go to hell? Why had she even listened, told him that he could prove himself to her? She’d chosen Rittenhouse. He’d chosen the Feds. No going back. No unringing the bell. It was done and over...wasn’t it? But there was some small part of her that whispered, _Maybe…_ And right then she hated that part of her for making her start to doubt, when what she needed most right now was certainty, a true north, rather than feeling like a broken compass spinning wildly. 

“Hounded by a fella you’re trying to lose?” a woman asked her, slipping an arm through Jessica’s. Tiny and with delicate features, wavy light brown hair flowing down around her shoulders. Those china doll lips curved up in a mischievous smile, echoed in her blue eyes. “We’ve all been there. Stick with me awhile, honey.”

Grateful for the help, she stayed back from the railing. “I’m Jessica Logan.” Didn’t realize until she said it that she still thought of herself that way, that the surname was as much hers at Wyatt’s now, given she’d owned it for half a lifetime. 

“Lillian Gish.” The slight head tilt told Jessica that apparently this was somebody who expected to be recognized.

So she rolled with it, frantically trying to remember some of the names Emma had rattled off. “I thought you looked familiar! I see mostly Arbuckle comedies, since my husband keeps dragging me to ‘em, but--” Praying like hell this woman wasn’t a comedy star of the 1910’s who constantly acted with Roscoe Arbuckle.

Gish laughed. “That explains it. It’s a pity Roscoe and I haven’t been able to film together. Mabel says he was always a doll to work with at Keystone, but different studios and all.” Her smile deepened. “At least studio doesn’t matter once the cameras stop rolling, though. Especially for Sessue, since he’s producing his own work now. Doesn’t mind people like little old Biograph me coming to the party.” She looked Jessica over with a frank gaze. “You’ve got a nice face. Expressive. Mr. Griffith’s always looking for new talent to put in front of the camera. More films being made every year, after all. People can’t get enough of them. Could use a good leading man too. There was a real beanstalk downstairs a while ago--dark, exotic, looks dangerous but also fun? He has potential.”

Oh my God, was she referring to Flynn? She almost started laughing hysterically. “Uh, yeah, Tall Dark and Deadly is actually the one I’m trying to avoid.” 

“He’s trouble? That’s a shame.”

But for a moment she couldn’t help but imagine it. Staying in 1918. Being a film star, rather than Wyatt Logan’s neglected wife. But it was all just a fantasy. She glanced over, saw Wyatt nowhere in view, or Flynn for that matter. “He’s gone, so I should make my exit while I can.” She shook her head. “Some of ‘em just can’t take ‘no’ for an answer, you know? Even when you’re married.”

“Doesn’t matter to some here in Babylon,” Lillian said with a sly grin.

“Matters to me, though.” 

At that, Lillian nodded, leaned back on the railing, giving her a farewell wave, looking actually disappointed. “Well, good luck, Jessica Logan, and if you change your mind, come to Biograph and tell them you talked to me.” 

Picking her way downstairs, she headed out for where Emma had disappeared, trying to find the garden. Nobody was outside, given the October night had turned a bit blustery and raw, but she heard voices among the hedges. Creeping closer, she recognized Emma’s voice first. “...your big Boston brothel escapade last year to celebrate signing Fatty Arbuckle.”

“I fired Abrams.” The voice had a faint accent to it, Eastern European. Not quite like Flynn’s, but obviously this man was an immigrant too. That had to make his life harder with some people.

Emma gave one of her short, sharp snorts of derision, as Jessica peered around the corner of the hedge, seeing the man with his back to her, Emma standing there. “Oh, please. Like you didn’t play ‘hide the pickle’ that night too, Adolph. You fired Hiram Abrams to save yourself.”

“What do you want? The girls’ damn families already bled me.”

“Not money.” Emma took a step closer to him, into a pool of light from one of the garden lanterns, like an actress stepping into the spotlight. “I want you to give me and mine financial and creative partnership in Players-Lasky and Paramount. My organization has some very good ideas for films that people will respond to, the sort of things you should be making. And having a native-born American as the face of things rather than a Hungarian Jew will look a lot better for the reformers knocking on your door. You know what a bunch of rabid bigots they are. We can help each other, you and me.”

Zukor laughed, shaking his head, sounding incredulous. “Lady, you’re crazy. That’s never gonna happen. Who do you think--”

“Then Plan B it is. Looks like the first Paramount scandal hits in 1918 rather than 1920,” Emma said coolly, raising her right hand from her side to show the pistol there, and with a single silenced _pop_ , Zukor collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut, a mess of blood and bone and brains flying in a gory mist. Jessica watched in frozen horror, seeing the blood spreading all over the grass, pooling around the outstretched fingers of his right hand. He ended up face down on the grass, but she easily imagined the neat hole in the dead center of his forehead. 

Hiking her navy blue skirt, Emma tucked the gun into a garter holster. Nodding to Jessica, she said, “Looks like we’re done here. If nothing else, this should light more of a fire under the reformers’ asses, maybe get the job done before 1930. Let’s go, before the cops arrive. If we’re lucky, the Scooby Gang will get caught up in that.” Seeing Jessica’s hesitation, Emma stepped over Zukor’s body and put a hand on her shoulder, waiting until Jess looked up at her. “Hey. Hey. C’mon. He was a sleazy hypocrite who threw people under the bus rather than give up any power. He’s making this country worse, you know? Hollywood and America will both be better off without him.”

She had the traitorous thought then: _And why do you get to decide who lives and who dies? Who’s so much ‘better off without them’ that they don’t deserve to live?_ She chased it away as hard as she could. Rittenhouse would make America better, bring people together rather than divide them. She had to believe that. They’d brought her parents the miracle of Kevin’s life. They’d seen something in her. If a few eggs got broken to make the omelette, well, that was hard, but still worthwhile, right? 

But as she turned from the garden, following Emma, she looked back over her shoulder one last time at the body alone in that garden. The icy shiver running down her spine wasn’t all the October wind.

~~~~~~~~~~

The moment they hit the door, her throat went tight, a quiver in her stomach. So many people. So, so many people, and it kicked her claustrophobia into high gear. The overwhelming noise didn’t help either, and it seemed too loud, the lights too bright. Finding the wall with her trembling hand, she leaned against it, breathing deeply. _Fear isn’t real. Fear isn’t real._

Finally she was aware of someone talking to her, the words becoming distinctive from the roar in her ears. “Mrs. O’Neill, are you all right?” Lifting her head and looking up, she saw Garcia standing there awkwardly, looking at her with the edge of fright lurking in his eyes. Beside him was a much shorter man, and from his features, the dapper evening clothes, and the heavily Japanese-accented English, she could guess who this had to be. For him to know her supposed fake married name, she had to wonder how long Garcia had been standing there saying her name urgently, trying to snap her out of it, and then explained that his wife was off kilter. 

Raising a hand, she gave a dismissive wave. “I’m all right, Mr. Hayakawa,” she said, mustering a smile for him. “I’m so sorry to have caused you alarm.” 

He laughed softly, giving her a warm smile. “No, call me Sessue. You’re a guest. I like America very much for that--in Japan, everything is so much more formal. Even old friends, on meeting, will just bow politely. Here? People you’ve just met can be so friendly. Tsuru would never forgive me if I didn’t help a lady in distress, and I’d be a poor host besides if I didn’t. ”

“I feel so silly,” she answered, recovering her equilibrium further, pushing herself back upright and managing a _see, everything is fine_ smile. “Obviously something I ate earlier today disagreed with me.”

Garcia and Hayakawa exchanged knowing looks, and she wondered dryly if she’d just become fake-pregnant again along with being fake-married. “Well, then come in. If you need a more quiet place, I find the garden is very peaceful. There is a Zen area that especially might help clear the mind--you would know it by the sand, and the rocks.”

“Oh, yes, _karesansui_ ,” she answered. “For meditation, yes.” 

He practically beamed at her. “You’re a student of Japanese culture?”

“I’ve studied a little, but not as much as I should,” she explained. Some personal interest, some anthropology, some of its dovetailing with American history post-Matthew Perry more or less bulldozing his way into Edo Bay in 1853, and essentially forcing Japan to accept Western influence. “Your culture is fascinating.”

“But I have two cultures now,” he corrected her smoothly. “As does your husband, I believe, given his English is not quite American either?”

“You’re very perceptive,” Garcia acknowledged. “My mother was American, but I was born and raised in Dalmatia. In the Balkans.” His smile was a little rueful. “A different kind of crossing of East and West than yours, but I understand the feeling.” 

“Actors need an ear for speech. I know mine is not...if the films were not silent--” He made a self-conscious face, nose wrinkling in disgust. “But then,” looking aside at Garcia, “you know the struggle as Tsuru and I do. To be true to both sides of yourself.” His face lit with a sudden passion, eyes shining, and Lucy could see why Connor was half in love with the man. “I wish the Americans could accept Japanese culture--the true Japan, _my_ Japan--not the Japan that I have to put in my films that they can accept.” He shook his head. “And then I could stop hearing from Japanese publications that I betray Japanese culture by giving Americans this sorry not-true Japan, because in truth, I do.” 

She hadn’t thought about it like that, given she had at least some American roots back to David Rittenhouse and beyond, loathsome as the thought remained. But Garcia, Denise, Jiya--they’d all struggled with it, hadn’t they? From the glimmer of understanding in Garcia’s eyes, yes, Hayakawa was right.

A petite woman wearing her black hair in a neat chignon came up, wearing a cherry pink dress with dramatic black trim. “Kintaro,” she said, addressing Hayakawa, “are you trying to get them to act in a picture with you?” She looked at Lucy and Garcia, giving them a rueful smile. “I’ll apologize for my husband. He gets very excited about his ideas.”

“Oh, we don’t act, unfortunately,” she said. Except constantly while on mission, but that felt different regardless.

“The film magazines will claim otherwise, but neither did I until I made my way to Los Angeles, found the theater, and I failed to board my boat back to Japan.” He grinned, putting an arm around Aoki in a way that would have been unthinkable in Japanese culture. “She found me there, and convinced Mr. Ince to give me an opportunity. Between that, and when she easily stopped eight policemen, big men,” he waved a hand above his head to indicate their height, “in a demonstration of jujitsu, then how could I help but love her?” 

“I knew I couldn’t let Samantha go when she told me, no fear at all, exactly how much of a disastrous idiot I was being,” Garcia quipped. She couldn’t help but look at him, surprised, not sure if he was serious or playing the role. She wouldn’t say she had fond memories of their encounter in the DC train station in 1865 where she’d decided she was over his cryptic crazy bullshit, emotions wild and raw with the loss of Amy, and resolved to not be afraid of him.

“Maybe you should be an actor, Jack.” Because of course the “O’Neill”, plus calling her “Samantha” had to be a Stargate SG-1 reference, given he’d told her it was one of his favorite shows. _Well, SG-1 did get Daniel back alive, so…maybe that’s encouraging for us with Rufus._ “You’re so very dramatic,” she told him, tone dry as the Mojave Desert.

“I’ve got this wonderful idea,” Garcia’s face an expression of unholy nerdy glee, “if you’re interested in it? A film about this ancient artifact uncovered in the desert. A stone ring made by a people from far beyond the stars, and when the various symbols on that ring are pressed in particular orders, it becomes a gate to an infinite number of worlds, all unique.”

“Are these people who left the ring a peaceful people?” Hayakawa asked with interest.

She couldn’t help but get into it. “No, they came as conquerors, but the people of Earth rose up long ago and killed their masters. But on many other worlds, people remain enslaved.”

“And so the slaver race will never speak of Earth,” Aoki said.

“Yes, exactly!”

“And the heroes will become star-travelers and try to free other people in these different worlds, yes?” Hayakawa’s dark eyes sparkled. “I like that idea. My one ambition has always been to play a hero, and get the girl in the end.” He said it with a bit of a wistful smile.

“You got the girl,” Aoki teased him, reaching over to playfully put a hand on his arm.

For once in his life, Garcia remembered his manners. “But we shouldn’t take up all your time. Thank you so much for inviting us, and we’ll leave you to your other guests.” He held an arm out to Lucy, and she looped her own through it, correctly being more casual than would have been seen even five years earlier. “Are you all right?” he asked her gently.

“I’ll be fine. It was a moment of claustrophobia,” she said. “From my car accident.”

“Ah.” He nodded, and as usual, there was no more need to explain it. “Connor, Wyatt, and Jiya went ahead to scout. Wyatt’s trying to spot Jessica and talk her down, and Connor and Jiya are supporting him and searching for Emma.”

“Connor will be so incredibly pissed we met Hayakawa if he doesn’t,” she muttered, unable to resist laughing. “And no, I don’t need to go to the garden. Sounds like nobody is out there, so that won’t help.”

“The dance floor looks a little more open.”

“Do we want to be spotted?”

“Job hazard for me pretty much anywhere in history short of standing in the middle of a grenadier regiment, given they were all six foot plus,” he pointed out wryly. “And knowing Emma, she’ll want to come gloat to you and me especially. Because it’s safe here for her to approach. I can hardly pull out my gun and kill her right there on the ballroom floor. This isn’t a Wild West saloon, after all.”

“You know, that reputation for cold-blooded killing in a saloon is vastly overblown by Westerns. Everyone thinks it was a crazy lawless war zone where people got shot regularly for no reason. The reality? In Tombstone in 1881, the year of the shootout at the OK Corral, that was apparently a shocking event for the people there, because there were only six other homicides, and four were considered justifiable. And that was the highest death rate for a Western town after the Civil War.” 

He gave her a dorkish grin. “I love when you talk history to me.” 

“Jiya could tell us about saloons firsthand. Our experience proves the exception, I guess,” she said, the two of them making their way through the crowd onto the ballroom floor, scanning all the while for a glimpse of Emma’s red hair.

“True. One dead, one severely wounded.” Rufus was a wound that wouldn’t heal for her, but especially now with what they were building between them, it made her blood run cold to realize exactly how close they’d come to losing Garcia too. A different gun, a different angle, Emma or Garcia being in a different place to shorten the distance by even a few feet. She wouldn’t admit it to him, but she’d had a few nightmares about it. And if Garcia had died on that porch too, she’d certainly have died in that alley at Emma’s hands. The fact he’d survived, and saved her, seemed too fortunate to be anything but God-given luck. “But that was Emma and not normal history, so…I don’t think the historical record needs to be challenged.” 

“Did you call? Look at you two, arm in arm and cooing like a pair of lovebirds.” She turned, letting go of Garcia’s arm, and there Emma was, standing there, eyeing the two of them with a smirk. Lucy felt the flare of rage within her, nearly as intense as it had been in that dingy alley. Emma would pay, somehow, someday. 

Garcia’s running his mouth wasn’t always the wisest course of action, but in this case, she wasn’t going to try to keep him from it. “This does beg the question: does saying your name summon you from whatever pit of hell spawned you?” 

“Cute, Flynn. So, do I get an invitation to the wedding? After all, I feel like I should get the credit, Princess. Guess all he needed to get with you was for me to get the wife out of the way without him having to feel guilty about it.”

“ _Seronja_ ,” Garcia hissed, “I swear to God, I will hunt you down, and--” They kept their voices low, and the volume of the music helped provide cover, but some of the other guests must have noticed the sudden electric current of tension, because Lucy realized they now had a few feet of very clear space around them, and curious eyes watching.

“Please. Lorena’s very happy, it seems, and I’m not going to touch her. And I’ve heard your record’s now spotless. You’re welcome.” That sharp smile, the gleam in her green eyes--yes, her obvious enjoyment was there and it deepened by the moment, and it made Lucy want to leap for her throat. “All you need is a bouncing baby brat to have that perfect life back. You two want to have that kid, heck, six of ‘em, I won’t stop you, unless you keep coming after me. So I’d suggest you walk away.”

“And why should we do that?” She stepped in front of Garcia, realizing it probably looked ridiculous given how much taller he was, but the instinct was there regardless.

“Because I did him another favor--seriously, Flynn, why am I doing all your work for you? I took care of the person who ordered the hit on you and your precious family. Again, you’re welcome.”

“And who was it?” Garcia asked, voice almost too calm, too cold, in that way she’d come to recognize meant he was poised on the razor edge of explosive violence. He’d moved that half step to stand by her side.

“Ben Cahill. Didn’t Princess here ever tell you that her very own genetic donor was responsible?” Garcia turned and stared down at her, eyes fierce, demanding to know.

“I never used the flash drive before I gave it to you,” she told him, struggling to keep calm herself. Benjamin Cahill ordered the assassination? Pediatric surgeon--guess it still fell under the umbrella of _do no harm_ if he only ordered others to do the dirty work. The nightmare just kept getting deeper and deeper, didn’t it? But the flash drive felt too private. Much like she’d told him his records relating to his relationship with Lorena were private and she’d respected that.

Denise had to have read it, though, and Lucy suspected she only handed that flash drive over and authorized her to set up the meeting with Garcia because Benjamin, and probably the assassins, were safe behind bars already, and she planned for Garcia to soon be there as well. Much as she loved Denise and respected her, that ruthlessness was there when she felt it was justified. But she would never be able to ask because that specific Denise Christopher was now erased.

From the way he visibly calmed, he believed her without question. But she moved to defend him, to take on Emma herself. It wasn’t like she didn’t have things to lay at Emma’s feet either. “I won’t thank you for it, but on the other hand, Dr. Cahill is no loss to me.”

“Given you never visited old Benny in prison, and sounds like you were up in Oakland constantly and all over this one before you broke him out,” she nodded to Garcia, “not surprised.”

She needed Emma’s own weak spot. That derisive way she called Lucy _Princess_ , and the chip on her shoulder about it. “It must have infuriated you, huh? Living alone for a dozen years. Doing so much good work fooling Garcia, gathering all that information on him and his plans, stealing the Mothership right from under the government’s nose, and then you get back to Rittenhouse, hand them all of that gift wrapped, and the bosses basically pat you on the head, tell you ‘good dog’, and kick you back out to the kennel. I mean, if you weren’t their pilot, you’d have been _nothing_ to them still, even after everything you did.”

From the murderous gleam in Emma’s eyes, she’d struck gold with that, and she couldn’t help but feel a savage sort of glee at it. “Yeah, well, even a dog only stands so much before it bites,” she sneered, but she couldn’t hide that she’d been shaken. “So you’re not sorry about Cahill. What about your mom, hm?”

No, she was done with this now, and she’d end it on her terms rather than let Emma get the last word and keep trying to play her pathetic mind games. “We’re going to end you.”

“Good luck,” Emma replied. “Hope you weren’t too attached to your buddy Hayakawa.” She turned, deliberately tripping a woman passing close by to her, which caused a cascading disaster given how closely packed people were. By the time the ruckus died down, and people were growling about drunk idiots, Emma had slipped away.

“Do you have her?” she asked Garcia, thankful for his height and the vantage it offered, looking up to see him scanning intently.

“I’m tall, Lucy, but I’m not looming that much above everyone,” he said, a sharp note of irritation entering his voice. “Dammit! No, she’s slipped off somewhere.” 

She glanced up to see Jessica and Wyatt talking at the railing of the second floor balcony, tension obvious between them even at this distance. Couldn’t see the others in the crowd. “Let’s try to find Connor or Jiya and see if they’ve tracked her. Or do we try to find Hayakawa?” Shaking her head in frustration, she had to ask, “Or did she say that as misdirection? Or is he already dead? Dammit!”

His voice stayed calm and even. “Don’t chase too many objectives, Lucy. Focus on one: finding Emma,” he said grimly. 

They found Jiya and Connor, Jiya keeping an eye on Wyatt now descending the stairs. “Jessica lost herself in the crowd,” she said with disgust. “Seriously, this is--”

“Have either of you seen Emma?”

“Mary Pickford, yes, Tsuru Aoki, yes, and Hayakawa himself, yes. Emma, no,” Connor said with an air of frustration.

Wyatt hustled into their huddle just then, a twitchy air of agitation almost palpable. “She looked like she was heading out towards those French doors--I’d guess that leads out to some kind of garden? I couldn’t push my way through the crowd, and I lost sight of Jess to boot.”

Carefully working their way through to the lead glass double doors, Garcia and Wyatt led the way into the hedges of the garden. Wyatt stopped, giving a swift, shocked inhalation. “Oh, shit. Looks like Emma’s been here.” She watched him scan the area alertly, looking for Emma or Jessica.

Leaning out, she peered past Garcia, seeing the body stretched out on bloody grass, and the ruin of the head. “Who is--”

“I don’t know, and no time,” Garcia interrupted, voice sharp. “Rittenhouse has done what they came for. Let’s get the hell out of here before someone else comes out here, panics, and calls the cops. We can’t be caught up in that. Don’t touch the body. We can’t leave fingerprints.”

Wyatt nodded curtly to Garcia. “Quickest exit--looks like there’s a garden gate that I saw when we walked in. Probably locked, but hey, no trouble for me.” He pointed northward. “Lucy, give me your sash--belt? Whatever that is.” She unwound the strip of chocolate brown silk from around her waist and handed it over. He wrapped it around his hand, covering his fingers.

Picking their way through the garden, she couldn’t help but keep an almost paranoid ear out for a sudden scream behind them that said the body had been discovered. Seeing Hayakawa’s rock garden as they passed seemed almost sad now. She had the feeling that this being a place of peace and reflection wouldn’t be easy, if at all possible, after this. There was no need for Wyatt to pick the lock. The wrought iron gate stood gaping wide open, the lock smashed, likely by a bullet. “Looks like they were here,” Jiya said.

Wyatt silently handed back her sash, and passing through the gate, she wound it around her waist again, drawing the bronze fabric of her dress back in close. “Connor, this is going to ruin Hayakawa and Aoki, isn’t it?” Jiya went on. “I mean, it’s cool to have a murder at your house party when it’s Agatha Christie, but when it’s real life…”

“Hard to say,” Connor replied, the five of them doing their best to stroll casually along the street and not look like they were rushing. The frustration and loathing felt like a heavy ball all knotted up in her stomach. Rittenhouse had won this round, whatever the fallout would be, and poor Hayakawa and Aoki would also likely take the fall for it. “I think...that may well have been Adolph Zukor. Head of what will become Paramount Studios. Jack and Mary Pickford mentioned Zukor was out in the garden meeting some potential new talent.”

“What’s Hayakawa’s history?” Garcia asked. 

“He’s doing fine right now as Japan is an American ally in World War One, and it’s considered a more civilized nation than, say, China. A few years from now, as Japan becomes more militaristic, Americans start to feel menaced. The ‘yellow peril’,” he said, framing the words with derisive air quotes. “So Hayakawa starts to fade a bit, heads to Europe where, if anything, they love him even more. He doesn’t transition well to talkies, sadly, due to his accent, but by then the racism was virulent enough it didn’t quite matter. Even Anna May Wong, the other major Asian actor in Hollywood around this time, and American born as she was with no trace of a foreign accent, got turned down for a lead role in ‘The Good Earth’ in the ‘30’s in favor of a white actress in yellowface. Hayakawa leads quite the life though. Studied banking at the University of Chicago before finding acting. Paints watercolors in Europe to make a living, assists the French Resistance in World War Two, has a late-career renaissance in the ‘50’s and early ‘60’s playing honorable villains, becomes a Zen priest when he retires from acting.”

“You admire him.” Wyatt’s voice was curiously soft.

“He’s a man who survived a suicide attempt as a teenager, and then after that, managed to become resilient enough to find a new path, a new angle, no matter what hardships life threw at him. A man who lived life to the fullest. Yes, I admire that very much.”

And now that life might be destroyed. Maybe they couldn’t undo whatever effect Zukor’s death might have, but perhaps they could slap a Band-Aid on Hayakawa’s reputation. “I have an idea.” Lucy gestured across the street, where the awning and lights of a restaurant beckoned.

“Yes, I’m hungry, Lucy, but this hardly seems the time.”

She shot Garcia a look. _Follow my lead._ Silently, he nodded in reply. “This restaurant was apparently popular with LA journalists of the time. Garcia and I, we’ve got this. Keep a lookout, and if this goes wrong, get back to the Lifeboat,” she told the others. 

Breathing in deeply, bursting in the door of the restaurant, gasping in near hysterics, she cried out, “Oh please, please, won’t someone call the police?”

A waiter approached. The restaurant was half-dead thanks to the flu, but there was enough of a crowd, and some of them were just the people she needed. “Mister, is your wife OK?” She managed to not roll her eyes at once again being treated as The Little Lady, in other words, a non-person. 

“We’ve...oh, Maria, just tell the man.”

“Oh, Tony, it’s too awful.” She gasped. “Poor Mr. Hayakawa. Those _beasts_ are trying to frame him!”

“Wait, what?” She practically heard the ears perk of of everyone in the room who must have been working for the press, and tried to hide a victorious smile. 

“Tony and I were out to get a present for our baby,” she said, casting her eyes down shyly. “And there were the oddest two women in Bullock’s talking about how they meant Mr. Zukor harm, because his films were damaging their cause, and how they’d pin it on ‘that yellow mo’--well, I won’t say it. Such appalling way to refer to such a lovely man! But they meant to pin it on Mr. Hayakawa.”

“We think they’re German agents,” Garcia picked up the story smoothly. “I know German when I hear it, and, well, _of course_ they’d want to frame up a Japanese man since he’s big news and his people are now on our side, right?”

“Where’s your accent from, anyway?” One journalist’s eyes narrowed as he stared at Garcia. “Sounds a little Kraut-like to me.”

“I’m Belgian. Four years ago when those damn Huns came into my home,” he said, tone dripping with frost. “Killed my wife. My daughter. I barely escaped. Does that meet your satisfaction of why I hate those bastards--sorry, love--with every fiber of my being?” 

“Sorry.” It sounded sincere, but then, the German invasion of Belgium in 1914 held almost sacred status as an Allied rallying cry in World War One.

She leaned in and clutched the reporter’s pin-striped lapels in her fingers. Went for her best ‘anguished and incapable doll’ expression, looking up into his face, pleading with him to be the big strong man to rescue a poor helpless woman. “Please, call the police before it’s too late, and send them to the party, because Mr. Zukor’s in terrible danger!”

“All right, ma’am, I’m on it,” he said, tone low and soothing, like someone would use for an invalid or an idiot. 

“The two women--one’s blonde and in a pale blue dress, the other’s a redhead in navy blue. Thirties or so.” The journalist nodded his thanks, already obviously moving to handle the next hot scoop. With that, they made their escape.

“Well?” Jiya demanded as they met up in the alley.

“I think she just planted tomorrow’s huge headline about two women, foreign agents who murdered Zukor for making anti-German films, and tried to frame Hayakawa for it to cause tension between the US and Japan.” He glanced at her as if to ask if he’d read it right, and she gave him a tiny nod, pleased that he’d followed along so easily.

“Brilliant,” Connor said. “Oh, well _done_ , Lucy.” She couldn’t help but feel the rush of pleasure at the praise. She’d done all right, hadn’t she? And she’d done it with words, not with bullets. “It takes most of the sting out of it, I’d say.”

“Then let’s get back home,” Wyatt said, seeming curiously deflated now that the tension of adrenaline had drained from him. She wanted to ask what had happened with Jessica, but the other woman’s absence, and likely involvement in Zukor’s death, seemed to speak eloquently enough. No, she wouldn’t push herself in on his grief. She’d give him some space first. Besides, maybe Jessica wouldn’t come back on the first try, but Wyatt was a stubborn ass if nothing else. He’d keep trying, wouldn’t he?

Back at the farmhouse, Connor did the honors of looking up the amended history. “Paramount still kept going, albeit with some rocky years without Zukor’s smarts and nose for talent at the helm. Less of a major player, but...looks like things turned out all right. As for Hayakawa, he did go to Europe in 1922 still, where he and Aoki starred in a very well regarded science fiction film in 1925, ‘The Star Travelers’, whose plot sounds _very suspiciously like Stargate_ , which it apparently inspired. And here’s a bit of trivia: the main characters of Stargate SG-1, Jack O’Neill and Samantha Carter, are as a nod to Jack and Samantha O’Neill, who have co-writing credit on the 1925 film along with Hayakawa and Aoki. Oh, and it inspired an anime. Of course.”

“You made them make the inspiration for Stargate like seventy years before actual Stargate?” Jiya shook her head. “All right, we’re obviously watching that movie. And the anime.”

“ _And_ he won an Academy Award in 1958 for his role in ‘Garden of Malice’ as Detective Riku Sato, investigating the murder of a movie executive at the house of a prominent star by spies and saboteurs looking to frame him. Inspired by the events of Hayakawa’s life in 1918, no less.” Garcia laughed, leaning on the console. “Well done indeed.” 

That glow stayed lit within her. She’d faced Emma, crossed swords with her again, and perhaps she hadn’t taken her down, hadn’t beaten her with bullets or fists, but it felt she’d _won_ nonetheless. But as she got ready for bed, there was one more thing on her mind that she had to address. And this time, she wouldn’t hesitate to knock on his door. Though she slipped downstairs, finding a bottle of rum. Close enough.

He answered the door, glancing down at the rum. “That kind of night?”

“I didn’t read the flash drive. It was private.”

He inhaled deeply, nodding, though he sat down heavily on the edge of his bed. “You know I believe you. Though I almost wish you had.”

She sat down beside him. Putting an arm around his shoulders was an awkward angle, but she slipped it around his waist instead. “I know. Because now you’ll never know for sure.”

“She erased the assassination, and all records of it, with her messing around with Lorena’s timeline in Baltimore. Neither you nor I ever saw that data. Jiya and Connor and Wyatt didn’t. And anyone who did, aside from Emma, is either erased or dead. This Denise wouldn’t know, after all. Maybe it was Benjamin Cahill. Maybe she’s just screwing with me. But no, I’ll never know.”

He’d never get Iris back, and even the satisfaction of revenge was gone. She could at least taken down Emma for Rufus and her mother and Amy. He would never know who’d done it. One more thing taken from him. It seemed like the hits just kept on coming.

Pouring them both some rum, she said apologetically, “It’s all we have at the moment. I...expect Wyatt and Jiya have been hitting the liquor cabinet a bit heavily.”

“Can’t blame them.” He took the drink, downing it immediately. She held the bottle up, and he shook his head. “No, one is enough.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“I know it’s not. But I can still tell you I feel bad that it hurts you.” She couldn’t resist a smile, trying to get through to him despite her awkward words. “This is probably where you tell me that English is a terrible language that doesn’t distinguish between guilty ‘sorry’ and sympathy ‘sorry’, and rattle off four languages that do.” He laughed at that, a single low chuckle. “I also...came to ask a favor.”

“You’re free to have your way with me in most any way you like.” Well, at least his sense of humor was intact.

“Aren’t you supposed to be asking to have your way with me as repayment for the favor?” she joked.

He raised an eyebrow, looked down his nose, and pronounced very decisively, “Coercion? A bit tawdry.” He seemed only half-serious, but obviously playing it a bit carefully too. Strangely, she liked him for that, but they were beyond the point of sex jokes being presumptive. Especially since he'd opened that door months ago with that _gentle and responsive lover_ crack.

“Unless ‘kinky favors’ is your fantasy. I mean, if you’re both into it, then it’s not, right?” How did they end up in these conversations anyway? She couldn’t remember joking like that with anyone, male or female, and she hadn’t even kissed the man genuinely yet.

“Well, much as I’d love to go on for hours about _that_ , what’s your favor?”

She forced herself back to seriousness, which wasn’t hard given the topic. “Emma said Benjamin is dead.”

“Easy to check. I do have full NSA database access now that I’m a federal Boy Scout.”

“There’s that, but...the other thing I wanted to know. You said you’ve been talking to your brother. Gabriel.” She felt him tense, start to draw away. “No, I’m not asking about it. But it made me think. When I went to go see Cahill, there was a boy there. College age, maybe? So I have--had? Another half-sibling. At least one. And I, we, should...know about them. If for no other reason that we’re aware of a potential Rittenhouse threat. They were born into it too, after all.”

He sat there without saying anything for what felt like an eternity. “Lucy,” his saying her name was barely more than a whisper, barbed and painful. “Believe me, I know what it’s like to have that absence in your life. But they won’t replace Amy.”

“I’m not.” Though some part of her wanted it so desperately. “But I need to know.”

“All right.” He reached for his laptop, long arm snagging it easily from the desk despite sitting on the bed. She sat there, waiting while he signed in.

Benjamin Cahill was confirmed dead in federal custody in Alameda, died on July 27th. No details, but less than a week before. Emma had indeed been busy. But her eyes skipped down to the information on family. She couldn’t help the faint noise she made seeing herself listed as his daughter on a federal database, but then, Henry Wallace hadn’t been in the picture, had he, to provide any cover? She was just a bastard born to an unmarried college-aged Carol Preston, and obviously she’d listed Benjamin on the birth certificate.

The next line was more of a shock, but she read it aloud, as if to fix it in her reality. “Eleanor Catherine Cahill. October 10, 1992.” She had the thought _At least she wasn’t born in 1990. She, and Rittenhouse, didn’t take that from Amy._ The fact this woman didn’t look like Amy, with her near-black hair and pale blue eyes, helped too, as did her being a veterinary technician. 

“He had a son, you said?”

“In our timeline, yes. Or whatever timeline we were in then. I mean, we’ve tweaked and changed it in small ways so much. Apparently that changed something for Benjamin too. Who knows when it happened, or if it was us, or Rittenhouse, or even you.”

She glanced up at his face to see him watching the picture of Eleanor Cahill with his usual intensity. “Now you know. And no Rittenhouse ties noted, and she wasn’t arrested in the federal sweep of Rittenhouse last spring. Whether that means she’s not involved, or she was too low level to leave a trail, not certain. What do you want to do?”

She shook her head, hopeful and miserable and afraid and somehow feeling the loss of Amy all over again. Wondering about a woman who’d just lost her father, who’d been both a healer and a monster. She’d opened Pandora’s Box, and he’d warned her, but she couldn’t undo it now. “I don’t know.”


	13. 3x04: One Stone (Wyatt: Zürich, Switzerland, October 1900)

The morning rose dim and dull like tarnished silver, the heavy cloud ceiling low and menacing, carrying the promise of more rain. Wyatt’s right arm told him the same, a low throbbing ache deep within the bone. He’d had a compound fracture in Kandahar, fallen off a roof while chasing down yet another tinpot tribal warlord when the old, weathered cement at the edge crumbled underfoot and he’d fallen ten feet to the street below. He was lucky. Mac, standing right beside him, had broken his leg so badly he’d gotten a medical discharge. As was, Wyatt had his share of titanium plates and pins still holding his right humerus together, and they made weather forecasting even easier, albeit even rougher to bear.

Stepping out into the yard and the thick wet clammy heat from the late August rains that never seemed to quite evaporate in the saturated and humid air, he avoided the mud puddles and headed out to the barn. Time to hurry and get the morning workout in before breakfast. Eyeing the clouds, he couldn’t be sure if they might be able to squeeze shooting class in before the skies opened up yet again. Might have to swap it around for daily Lifeboat worktime again, if things cleared up in the afternoon and early evening. Most everything else they could manage indoors, but firearms, especially when they were using ancient muzzle-loaders, was firmly an outdoor pursuit. Though it seemed like Lucy took to it with a vengeance, and he wasn’t sure whether to be proud or terrified at her being such an apt and ferociously driven pupil. She and Flynn kept exchanging silent glances out on the range, saying something between them about Lucy and guns that he wasn’t a part of, and honestly, he couldn’t say whether he wanted to know whatever had maybe happened in Chinatown when Emma got away from both of them. To be fair, though, Flynn had been injured then, and he had to admit having his right arm so fucked up had played hell with his own shooting for months.

Speaking of the devil himself, Flynn was in the gym corner, at work doing what looked like a physical therapy exercise on the shoulder, making slow controlled sweeping arcs of the arm parallel to the ground with a weight in his hand. Watching the faint tremors still present here and there, the occasional wobble of the weight, Wyatt couldn’t help but grimace in sympathy at it.

Half-ignoring Flynn, he started with his set of crunches, then flipped over and moved to push ups. The exertion felt good, a way to clear his thoughts, help focus his mind for the day. Ritual: easy, simple, direct. 

Weirdly, it was Flynn who’d understood how much he needed things made explicit and clear. But he couldn’t uncloud his thoughts this morning even with routine. Couldn’t help but bring to mind the one thing that wasn’t direct, was about as clear as mud. Jess’ face swam in his thoughts, standing on that balcony in Hayakawa’s mansion, three weeks and a hundred years ago. Watching him without fondness but without hatred either, mostly just seeming...frustrated, wary. Brown eyes on him, focused on him rather than on the mission, so he’d held her attention, but he’d missed the catch. He’d tried, told her that it didn’t matter what she’d done, had exercised all the restraint he had to not start yelling about _Rufus being dead_ , about the lies she’d told him to his face, all while she was throwing accusations about Lucy and he just stood there and took it because wasn’t that proof that he loved her? He cringed now to think that she was right. If Lucy had been willing...God, it hadn’t felt wrong to say it, but looking at it coldly, declaring his love to another woman hours after he’d been desperately trying to win Jess back from Rittenhouse? No way that looked good, and Jess had zeroed in on it with the pinpoint accuracy of a sniper.

Prove it to her, she’d said. How? What more could he do? Pausing in the push ups, he glanced up at Flynn, busy now stretching the arm across his chest. “How’s it feeling?” he asked cautiously. Flynn paused himself, eyebrows rising as if shocked that Wyatt would ask. He lifted his left hand off the floor, going into a side plank for a moment, gestured to the faded scarring on his right arm from the injury and the surgery. “Fucked this up in Afghanistan seven years ago now. Spent four months back stateside recovering and rehabbing it. Not fun.” Though it was the longest he and Jessica had been together since they were married. His frustration at his physical abilities failing him so badly boiled over more than once, made him snappish and short-tempered. It got into his head like a termite chewing up support posts, got worse, and when things failed between them in bed--it only ever happened a couple times before when they were both pretty drunk--and she tried to comfort him, that felt like the final humiliation for his damn traitor body failing him, but he couldn’t tell her that, couldn’t tell her that he felt weak and scared and so diminished. Couldn’t say that now _nothing_ felt certain, because if he couldn’t be a soldier and fight, if he couldn’t even fuck his own wife, what was he? It probably was no surprise that they’d both almost been relieved when he was cleared for duty and headed to Egypt, much as the low-level terror at going back into a war zone was there. The next time he came home, the air between them still anything but clear--that was the time Jess didn’t come home from a lonely mile marker on Portillo Road. 

“Nope,” Flynn replied, putting the arm down, shaking it out. “I’ll be fine on mission, though,” and his tone was almost too insistent. Wyatt saw Flynn’s gaze searching his face, as if looking for the hidden sting to the inquiry. Being Flynn, though, of course he couldn’t keep from a wiseass comment. “So, are we actually to the point of having civil conversations? My, my, my. Denise will be so happy.”

His anger spiked at that and it was on the tip of his tongue to tell Flynn to fuck off, but all that had gotten him last time was kicked off-mission, and Denise probably still watched him and was only waiting for him to explode again. So he couldn’t go to her. Which left Garcia Asshole Flynn, but he could admit when it counted, Flynn had actually been the one to try to smooth the troubled waters, which was weird but he didn’t exactly have the luxury of choosing his defenders these days. “How long were you and your wife married?”

Those eyebrows rose even higher, dramatically exaggerated like the silent films they’d watched since getting back from 1918. He could see the impulse in Flynn to say something defensively snippy, but then he nodded. “Her name was Lorena. Eight years.” He smiled, but it was a sad thing, pale and tired and faded as winter, a ghost of the joy it could have been. “Would have been twelve this past April.” Married to another man now, apparently, and that had to be a mindfuck.

“And your daughter?” He was trying, wasn’t he? Maybe he’d fucked up with Flynn in the past, and he still didn’t fully trust the man, especially with Lucy, but yeah, OK, perhaps he could try harder to make some kind of connection. Flynn had been a father before he went berserk. He had to understand some things about what Wyatt was going through right now.

Flynn’s eyes narrowed, brow furrowed in cautious confusion. “Iris would have been nine in June.” He wet his lips, arms crossing over his chest, the lines of his body tense with the wariness of a dangerous animal waiting to see whether to attack or flee. “Not that I don’t appreciate this lovely and long-overdue ‘getting to know you’ chitchat, given I’ve been with you all for, what, seven months now, but we seem to be missing the coffee and doughn--”

“You were married, so...Jess...told me that I had to prove to her I’d changed,” he blurted out, unable to bear the pretense. If he was going to have to swallow his pride and ask this man for help, he’d as soon eat the shit cake and get it over with already. “I don’t…” 

Flynn stared at him for a few long, silent seconds. “ _Do_ you have any coffee?” he asked awkwardly. Wyatt shook his head. Flynn jerked a thumb towards the barn door, in the direction of the farmhouse. “Fine. We’re making coffee. I’m not awake enough without it to solve my own damn problems, let alone tack on yours.”

Ten minutes later, sitting at the chipped and battered kitchen table with a mug of black coffee, he watched Flynn heap cream and sugar into his. “Are you sure you don’t just want a milkshake?” he asked sarcastically. “Or maybe a pumpkin spice latte?”

“Is your masculine pride _really_ that fragile that it has to be tied to beverages? Predictable.” Flynn smirked at him over the rim of his coffee mug. “Besides, Lucy likes a good pumpkin spice latte. So did Lorena. I ended up drinking a few whenever Starbucks would mess up the order.” He shrugged, a rolling, lithe motion that put Wyatt in mind of a tiger languidly stretching. “Somehow, improbable as it may seem, my cock has not yet fallen off from it.”

Wyatt almost choked on his coffee. “I really don’t need to think about your--” Didn’t need to think about Lucy’s apparently being into it--on it?--either.

Flynn sat back in his chair, that lazy smirk growing wider. “I keep telling you, Wyatt, you’re not my type.” Wyatt wasn’t sure whether he wanted to ask if the whole “into guys” vibe Flynn gave off was some kind of European cultural difference, a deliberate act to fuck with Wyatt, or if he was legitimately bisexual. Not a conversation he really wanted to launch into right then. Then Flynn sighed, leaned in, put a elbow on the table and propped his head against it. “All right. Dammit. Enough picking at each other. So Jessica told you that you had to change. May I ask exactly what you said to her?”

“I don’t remember it verbatim,” he protested. Flynn rolled his eyes in a _no shit, Sherlock_ expression. “I told her that we wouldn’t talk about Rufus, that we’d talk about us. And that I didn’t care what she’d done. No conditions, that I wanted her and the baby back.”

Flynn took a hefty swallow of his coffee. “Well.”

“What?” He heard the defensiveness in his tone and hated it.

“Honestly, you did better in your speech to us.”

“I wasn’t aware I was trying out for the fucking debate team here!”

He could see Flynn once again suppressing a smartass remark only with effort. “All right. My advice? You can’t just _ignore_ Rufus, kidnapping Jiya, and her lying to you. Just like you can’t ignore how you apparently were a jealous ass who got pissed at her talking to another man and abandoned her by the roadside where a serial killer found her. You ever tell Jessica about that?”

He looked down at his hands, feeling weirdly like he’d been caught red-handed. “No.” She’d already been so much on the fence about taking him back. How could he have admitted that to her? How did two people come back from the admission that he’d directly led to her being murdered?

“You should. Otherwise you’ll always be afraid of her finding out. Tell her what you did, but tell her how much you’ve regretted it. How much you didn’t sleep, wishing you could do it all differently. As for her, tell her you understand she was scared. Rittenhouse got to her as a kid. Made her feel she owed them. She felt she couldn’t trust you enough to tell you. Then she had no way out. Also wouldn’t go pushing that you want her and the kid back. I get it, but that? That’s setting conditions-- _I’ll only help you get away if you come back to me._ You need to think of this as saving _Jessica_. A woman in trouble. Not your wife, not the mother of your child. You tell her you what you told us. You want to get her out of Rittenhouse because she deserves to not be beholden to a fucked-up cult.”

“That make sense...I guess.” He couldn’t help the end equivocation. But how could he convince Jess he loved her without telling her that he’d be there waiting, trying to make them come back together again?

“And you need to be ready for her to walk away from you if that’s what she wants. She needs to have that choice too.”

“What, like you were going to--”

Flynn cut him off. “I was ready to, yes.” Wyatt’s face must have shown some of his instinctive thought of _Oh, bullshit_. “Or, rather, I had already let go of us having a future. All I wanted was to know Lorena and Iris were alive again. Given I knew I was looking at prison for the rest of my life…” Those dark hazel-green eyes bored into his, as if daring Wyatt to call him a liar to his face. “I’m assuming we--the ‘us’ that were from this timeline--gave Denise that mission report again after Jessica came back, since she and Connor wouldn’t remember it. And I’m assuming it played out much the same in our timeline. Lucy mentioned you weren’t there in Paris in 1927. That another soldier took your place, and died there.”

“Yes. Though be honest, not like you weren’t hoping I’d steal the Lifeboat when you gave me Wes Gilliam’s name.”

“I’m having to guess at my own strategy here, OK? Because remember, I don’t recall Jessica being dead. But given I know what I’d have done, let’s say I didn’t imagine Denise would let you borrow the Lifeboat to go kill Wes Gilliam’s parents if you asked nicely, no.” 

“I didn’t plan to--” The thought of Joel Bender’s unseeing eyes still haunted him some nights.

“You were willing, in the end,” Flynn cut him off. “You went ready to do whatever it took.”

It only stung because he was right. If he hadn’t been willing to go the distance, he’d have backed off from Claire and Joel the minute he’d seen he couldn’t sway her attention from the other man. But he’d stolen the damn time machine, he was committed, so he had to get it done, and so he sank deeper and deeper into the quagmire by the minute. He’d thought about it too--even if he hadn’t gotten Joel killed, would the two of them have hooked up a week, a month later, and conceived Gilliam anyway? Besides, it hadn’t mattered. Jessica still died. Joel Bender died for absolutely nothing, and that blood was on his hands, even if now it had never happened. “Yeah, I was. You want details or what?”

Flynn’s tone would have done the Sahara credit with his dry it was. “No. I figured you’d oblige, go steal the Lifeboat, get your fool self arrested. And whoever they replaced you with, however competent they might be, wouldn’t matter. It was your team dynamic that was becoming the threat, and this would rattle that.” He looked down, throwing another spoonful of sugar in his coffee-sludge. “So yes, it was strategic. But I imagine when we talked at the National, when I stole the Watergate tape, that I tried to tell you that we were alike, that I’d help you get your wife back if you’d only believe me about Rittenhouse.”

“You did.” Close enough, anyway. It still felt weird that Flynn didn’t remember that conversation.

Flynn nodded. “I...look. I wasn’t a good man, and maybe I used your need to get Jessica back, but that doesn’t mean it was all self-interest. I honestly would have wanted you to save her. As to your man who died in Paris...” He made an open handed gesture across the table. “Have at it if you want to blame me for it.”

He could, given how sick it had made him to hear about Bam-Bam’s death, senseless and stupid. But he’d put the man in the line of fire too, hadn’t he, by getting himself arrested? Mostly he was getting tired of slinging blame, because it got him precisely nowhere. “I could. But he was only there because I wasn’t. And he’s alive again, apparently. Guess bringing Jessica back and undoing that whole sudden left turn in my life kept him alive.” There had been a half-dozen texts from the man over the last six months, trying to get together. The last had been a little over a week ago. _Team on E Coast yet? Bragg in Oct for new assgnmt, LMK if you can make it down. Still owe you a drink._ He hadn’t replied yet. He should. Maybe getting out of this whole circus for a little while might do him good, assuming Denise would let him go down to North Carolina for a weekend. Maybe if he promised to be ready for an immediate Lifeboat pickup if need be. She’d relaxed the rules from the bunker, though, obviously recognizing they’d gone stir crazy there. 

“I’m assuming you did in fact end up sitting in prison for your stunt in stealing the Lifeboat? Wasn’t just a slap on the wrist and Denise sidelining you for the mission?”

“Black ops site,” he corrected Flynn. “But I’m sure federal prison was the next stop if the NSA members of Rittenhouse hadn’t taken over Mason Industries, kicked Denise out, and she broke me out to help fight them.” What was Flynn getting at, aside from enjoying dragging up one of his worst mistakes of recent years?

“So from the moment they dragged you off in handcuffs, you knew you’d never see Jessica again. Never hold her. Never tell her you loved her. But it was worth it anyway to know she was alive again, and back in this world, right? That would be enough.” 

He looked away, not because of shame, but because of the swell of emotion that felt too explosive to contain in his chest, like it would burst his heart. “Yes,” and he heard the defiant edge in his tone, daring Flynn to laugh at him for it. Though--would he? “You pretty much expected the same, didn’t you?”

“Yes.” Flynn let out a low chuff of laughter. “Stealing a time machine, failing to save our wives, having Rittenhouse bring them back solely to fuck with us, and then Denise Christopher helps break us out because she needs us in the fight. We’re a real damn pair, you and me.” 

Somehow the impulse to swear up and down that he and Flynn had absolutely nothing in common was fading. “So--start by spilling my guts and hope she doesn’t hate me.”

He smiled again, and there was something of that sharp edge to it, but a strange softness almost like sympathy in his eyes. “That’s love, when you’ve screwed up. You admit everything and hand them the hatchet, and trust that they’ll bury it in the ground rather than in your skull.”

“Wow. Your romantic talk game is on _point_ , dude. Does that actually work on Lucy?” Their eyes met and he wasn’t sure how, but the two of them ended up laughing, stupid as it was, and they should keep it down because the others were probably still sleeping, but he couldn’t, and Flynn couldn’t either. When he heard a foot tread on the squeaky stairs, that meant they’d better hurry it up before they had an audience. “Go into it with Jessica like I did after I killed Joel Bender, huh? With no hope of a future with her.”

“No expectation,” and the tone of the correction, and Flynn’s face, were strangely gentle. “Hope, by all means. But her choosing to leave Rittenhouse, and choosing to take up with you again?” His hands moved like the platforms of a scale, up and down, as if weighing both options. 

“Got it. Keep ‘em separate things.” Once again, improbably, Flynn made sense of it in a way that he could handle. They weren’t going to be best friends, but maybe, just maybe, he didn’t exactly resent the man’s mere presence anymore except as a tolerated tactical necessity. _Guess that’s progress._ Though if he hurt Lucy, all bets were still off.

Connor came in first, inhaling. “Is there any coffee left?” he asked hopefully.

“In the pot,” Garcia answered, gesturing towards it.

“Bless you.” Connor stood to head for the coffeemaker, and more footsteps announced Jiya, Lucy, and Denise’s arrivals. 

Sitting around the table, all of them caffeinating, Denise spoke up first. “I’ve looked into it, and I can’t get another bunker, unfortunately.”

“Do any of us _really_ miss the tetanus-risky California bunker lifestyle?” Connor quipped.

“Not to mention it wasn’t very secure in the end,” Lucy added, throwing Wyatt an apologetic glance.

“All true. But keeping on the move is a good idea.” She eyed Flynn. “I imagine you agree with that strategy, given you apparently moved your base several times?”

“Maybe I just liked a routine change of scenery,” he said cheerfully. Denise gave him a stone-cold glower. “Of course I agree.”

“Good. We’ll be moving to a new safe house in a week.”

“Where to?” Lucy asked, draining the last of her coffee and reaching for the coffee pot on a trivet in the center of the table. He noticed she loaded hers up with cream and sugar too. Flynn was probably right about the damn pumpkin spice lattes.

“St. John the Baptist Parish, Louisiana. Near New Orleans.”

“That’s a whole town name?” Jiya had to ask dubiously. “Heck of a mouthful.”

“Louisiana has parishes, not counties,” Wyatt explained. “They were under French and Spanish rule, so it was a Catholic territory, and they just kept the ‘parish’ name when it came to political map-making since they usually kept the old church parish lines. And names, for that matter.” When the others glanced at him, obviously surprised, he shrugged, trying to not sound too defensive. “Jess and I passed through Louisiana on our honeymoon. She wanted to read all the roadside signs every time we stopped.” He realized too late that mentioning Jessica wasn’t the best move still, especially to Jiya, but she took it without a flicker of anger.

“The other solid possibility in Minnesota won’t be available until around Christmas given it’s currently being used as a base for a joint investigation.”

“Investigation for what?” Jiya said wryly. “People trying to smuggle maple syrup in from Canada?” 

“Joint FBI/NSA/BIA/tribal police investigation of the disappearances of young native women from numerous Indian reservations in the upper Midwest. They suspected the women are being trafficked,” Garcia said. Denise gave him a questioning look. He shrugged, glancing down at his coffee mug. “The task force asked me for some advice last month.”

“Makes sense. Your file said you did have something of an expertise in helping hunt down human traffickers for the authorities,” Lucy replied.

“Inevitable when you’re running government contracts in Eastern Europe. It’s too fucking common in the former Soviet bloc,” he muttered, eyes flashing darkly with anger. “And apparently on the reservations too, and Central America for that matter. Same problems each time--poverty, alcohol, violence, lack of education and opportunity.”

Sometimes it was easy to forget with as concerned as they were about Emma ripping apart the past to screw up the present and future that others were out there fighting other issues, that their problems weren’t the worst that could happen. They sat in awkward silence for a few moments, until Denise finally spoke up again, picking her words with a strange care. “We’ll likely move there next once the investigation is done. So it’s either Louisiana, the Wyoming badlands, or the Alaskan bush. Take your pick. Government-owned locations with a large secure storage shed for the Lifeboat, enough land to provide a buffer from the neighbors, and six-plus bedrooms, aren’t exactly a dime a dozen.”

“Mmm, more to do in Louisiana to keep us sane,” Connor said. “Not to mention the logistics of getting supplies there will be much better than Alaska or Wyoming, and given how delicate the upcoming Lifeline work will be, I’d prefer we’re certain that those supplies are arriving in tiptop shape rather than being kicked around repeatedly by five different FedEx employees.”

“Fine, we’ll get packing,” Jiya replied. “So what’s on today’s to-do list? We’ll have to finish putting the Lifeboat nav system back together this afternoon.”

“Unless the weather clears up, no shooting practice,” Wyatt answered her.

The alarm sounded, and Wyatt hated Connor a little bit in that moment for insisting on putting one in the living room. Though to be fair, it wasn’t like they could hear the one in the barn from the house, but on principle, he hated it. “Well, here we go,” he muttered.

“Zürich, Switzerland, October 11th, 1900,” Denise reported from the tablet hooked up as readout panel.

“Nothing immediate comes to mind for major events,” Lucy said apologetically. “I mean, the Second Boer War was on, but that was in South Africa.” She chewed her lip thoughtfully. “Einstein was a student at Zürich Polytechnic Institute, though...”

“Einstein. As in ‘guy whose name means _brilliant_ ’?” Looked like Emma was getting ambitious.

“If Rufus were here,” Jiya said, “he’d have some great joke about time travel, relativity, Einstein, and everything, but--not gonna manage it myself. So let’s just let it go.”

“Wyatt, Lucy, Garcia, Denise, you’re with me,” Connor said grimly. “Let’s hurry and patch together what we can of the nav system to get her up and flying. It’s going to be imprecise.”

“I can still fly it,” Jiya said. “Get the geo-nav fully nailed down at the expense of chrono-nav, Connor. Better that we land close and however many hours off target than end up landing a hundred miles away and wasting a day or more getting there.”

“I did build the thing, you know,” Connor reminded her with a petty peevishness entering his words, “I’m well aware of how the two different nav systems work.”

“I’m the one that flies it,” she retorted. “And I know what I can handle.”

“My God, the fussiness of pilots is a universal constant,” Connor muttered, throwing up his hands with almost Shakespearean dramatics. “Very well.”

“Jiya, can you trance? See if I’m right about Einstein, and what other info you can get?” Lucy asked.

“On it,” Jiya said, heading for the ugly old orange couch, presumably to get more comfortable for her trancing. “I’ll come pitch in once I’m done.”

Connor shook his head, mouth twisted in disgust, pushing his way out the back door and heading towards the barn, movements tight with frustration. He stormed right through a mud puddle and didn’t notice the backsplash of it all over the legs of his jeans. The air felt even heavier, charged and ready to burst at any moment with the coming storm. “Bloody Emma. Of course she would go ahead and jump while we have the nav down. We should have pushed harder last night and gotten it done.”

“We were all falling asleep on our feet from working on it for eleven hours straight already,” Denise argued. It had been a shitty rainy day so they’d forgone any training and done the nav system work, barely pausing to jam a sandwich into their mouths and drink some water. “Any work we did past that point probably would have careless from exhaustion and needed to be redone anyway. It’s done, now we’re all left dealing with it as best we can.”

Connor nodded tightly, throwing open the barn door, issuing orders for each of them with a crisp precision that would have done a drill sergeant proud. Wyatt ended up working with Lucy on getting the geo-nav put back together. “You four are going,” Denise told them from where she helped Connor reconnect wiring.

“Connor, you’re staying back?” Garcia questioned, turning a wrench with furious speed on the chrono-nav. “You were plenty useful on the last mission, man.”

“We didn’t think it through last time because of the rush to jump,” Connor said, not looking up from the wires. “Rufus is--gone still. Jiya’s necessary to pilot you, at least until one of you lot manages to reliably pilot the sim without crashing.” Lucy was by far the closest of the three of them, taking to it like a pro. Wyatt tried to not feel too pissed that he seemed to just not get it. He could drive a car like nobody’s business, like he’d proven down near Darlington and years ago in the West Texas desert, but the damn 3D--though it was 4D with time, wasn’t it--flight of the Lifeboat and his brain weren’t synching up nicely. “And even then she’ll need to be on mission. Should Emma get an idea from our apparent annoying antagonist Garcia Flynn, version 2016.1, or are you 2016.2 since _you_ came to _this_ timeline--”

“Oh, ha ha--”

“Anyway, if she tries to damage or destroy the Lifeboat and leave it dead in the water, you’ll need both a scientist there to repair it enough to fly it home, and one here acting as Mission Control to help bring it home if the nav system is down. And Emma unfortunately would know how to cripple the nav system, so she’d target it.”

“So did I, on Anthony’s advice,” Flynn pointed out. “We weren’t just having people sling C4 at it and hoping for the best.” 

“Lovely, you’re simply proving my point, Garcia. So, until we get Rufus back, this is the way it has to be. Jiya goes, and I stay.” 

“All right, makes sense,” Lucy said. Unlike their usual work sessions, nobody argued about whose turn it was to pick the Spotify station or podcast, and the silence except for the sound of power tools, the occasional grunt of exertion, and directions, requests for assistance, or asking for a tool, felt eerie. Fifteen minutes or so later, Jiya came in and joined in the work without a hitch.

“I think you’re right it’s Einstein,” she said bluntly. “I saw what looked like him as a college age student, with a woman about the same age, dark hair, walks with a limp--”

“That’ll be Mileva Marić,” Flynn interjected. Wyatt glanced up at him to see the man’s look of irritation at the lack of recognition. “What, nobody? Even the history geek hasn’t heard of her? Lucy, I’m wounded.”

“She was his first wife, right?” Lucy said.

Flynn’s lips pressed together in a tight line of annoyance. “She was a lot more than that. One of the first women in Europe to try to get a university degree in physics, and Zürich Poly was about the one place a woman could take courses for credit. Nobody’s sure about how much she may have contributed to Einstein’s papers on relativity, especially his big year in 1905--and whether others had a hand in it too--”

“Of course they did. Lorentz, Riemann, Gauss, Mach? Einstein just brought all the pieces together in one overarching vision,” Connor argued. “That was his genius. Genius often isn’t in discovery, it’s in _synthesis_.” He waved a screwdriver towards the Lifeboat. “You think I came up with this thing out of the blue? No. I simply put all the pieces together in a new way.”

Thinking of his Grandma Millie and her quilts, the tiny pieces of fabric cut apart and stitched together in a new pattern, Wyatt couldn’t help but frame it as, “You’re quilters, not weavers, huh?” She’d given him and Jess a quilt for their wedding. He had to wonder if it was still with Jess’ things at the apartment in San Francisco that they’d apparently still shared in this reality before that other Wyatt moved out. In his timeline, he’d put it the quilt into storage, not willing to donate Grandma Millie’s loving handiwork, but also not willing to sleep under that quilt without Jess. One more symbol of all the failures and blighted hopes.

“Not a bad way to put it,” Connor answered him.

Now Lucy jumped in, obviously more on familiar turf. “He also had to flee Berlin in the ‘30’s, thanks to being smart enough to see the writing on the wall as a Jewish intellectual in Germany. He was lucky enough that he got approved for immigration to America based on that genius, because Princeton wanted him. While we turned away Anne Frank and so many Jewish people fleeing the Nazis. Nice to see nothing’s changed in seventy years that now we’re still asking who has a PhD or a Nobel Prize and talking about who the ‘worthy’ refugees are.”

“Amen to that,” Denise muttered.

Flynn, as usual, couldn’t resist trying to get the last word in. “Like a lot of geniuses, though, also kind of a selfish dick. He more or less completely screwed up Marić’s education, got her pregnant and she subsequently failed out, and he kept pushing her further out of their former intellectual partnership from there. They got married, and then in the 1910’s he ended up cheating on her with his first cousin Elsa Löwenthal who more conformed to his idea of a proper wife, wrote this creepy manifesto demanding Marić be more or less his silent submissive domestic slave, and then divorced her to marry Elsa. Guy did not like capable women.”

“What,” Wyatt asked dryly, “you think he deserves to be killed for being a bad husband?”

Flynn glared holes through him. “What’s that about not being self-centered, careless of her feelings, and treating a wife as more than a restful escape from your _secret and very important work_ , Wyatt?” he asked with sarcastic saccharine sweetness. Especially at hearing Jiya’s snicker, Wyatt strangled the urge to throw something at him, given chucking something so heavy as a wrench probably would get him kicked off the damn mission again. “No, of course not. He did amazing things in science. He also worked hard in America for Jewish refugees. But he also cost Marić her chances with how he treated her. I imagine Lucy would say we need to see these people for who they are, both the greatness and the warts.”

“But you’ve heard of her,” Jiya said.

“Of course. Marić was Serbian, so she was a bit of a bigger deal in Yugoslavia. I read about her as a kid.” Garcia gave an oddly boyish smile. “Mom was happy to let me read about women in STEM, naturally.”

“All right, so I’m going to defer to the scientists here. If Rittenhouse goes after Einstein,” Lucy mused, handing Connor the reconstructed geo-transponder, “what’s the effect?”

“Uh, if they kill Einstein? Could be very bad. It all depends whether someone else can synthesize that particular subset of theoretical physics. Does it set physics back a few years, or a few decades, or a century? No relativity means almost _anything_ in aerospace gets significantly thrown for a loop. The space race, cell phones, GPS, bloody satellite TV, overbearing government surveillance--”

“Your point is taken, Connor,” Denise said dryly.

“Worst case scenario? You could arrive back in 2018, Jiya,” Connor said, all the snarky humor draining from his tone, “to find that you and Emma are the only two people on Earth who understand any of it. Denise and I likely won’t be here at all, given if there’s no relativity, there’s no time machine for me to have invented.”

Wyatt shook his head, trying to make sense of it. “So she kills Einstein and maybe keeps us in the ‘40’s in terms of technology. OK. Like, I get that Rittenhouse is nuts--”

“They’re anything but nuts,” Lucy shot back. “Trust me, I saw it up close and personal.”

“Rittenhouse is dangerous,” he corrected himself, not quite sure what button he’d pushed with her, but sensing it was best to go careful, “but doesn’t that seem a little...nihilistic?”

“Hey, you all thought I was just blowing shit up for the joy of destroying America,” Flynn said, leaning on the Lifeboat ladder with a wry smile. “I wasn’t.”

“Great, genius, you’re good at making sense of apparently psycho plans, then you come up with the rationale,” he retorted at Flynn. 

“It doesn’t make sense,” he replied. “You’re right. It’s too extreme to risk destroying the foundation of time travel, especially given we have the atomic battery and she doesn’t, plus so much of America’s becoming a world power _was_ based on aerospace technology after World War Two. Unless Emma’s completely abandoned Rittenhouse’s idea of a very fascist ‘America über alles’ and she’s now a hired gun for--who? The Chinese?” He shook his head. “Nah, that doesn’t fly either.”

“She’s in it for herself, not for hire,” Wyatt agreed with that. “She’s a sociopath, but not a mercenary.” And the longer Jess was with her, the more he had to admit to a secret fear that raised the hair on the back of his neck. Flynn had killed Anthony when Anthony tried to destroy the Mothership. He would admit, if only to himself, that Emma was far worse than Flynn had been, so if Jess stayed, would Emma kill her too if she said the wrong thing or ceased to be of use? He couldn’t fail to save her for a second time. He just couldn’t.

“Then hurry up, get to 1900 and figure it out,” Denise told them, and her tone would brook no argument. “Lucy, will the clothes you already have on hand have work?” They’d gotten a few more changes of clothing recently to try to pad out the wardrobe a bit and fill in some of the gaps. Nothing nearly as impressive as Connor’s warehouse had been, but better than spending a few hours trying to steal clothes somewhere so they could fit in.

“We’ve got clothing that’s more around 1910, not 1900,” Lucy said, “but we’ll make it work. Shirtwaists and skirts for women are fairly classic for years, and Wyatt and Garcia will be fine. Men’s suits tend to not change that much until World War Two.” She gave a dismissive shrugging dip of her shoulders, hunched over reconnecting more wires. “If nothing else we’ll just claim to be from--I don’t know, a smaller city like St. Louis or something--and most Europeans will automatically assume we’re a bunch of American hayseeds who don’t know anything about culture anyway. Plus we’re not exactly heading to a fashion metropolis anyway, so we can get away with it.”

 _God forbid people not be tapped into the vibes of the big city._ As usual, he couldn’t help being oddly defensive that it was fine for people to not worship what New York or Paris or Los Angeles or London said was cool. He liked them, but damn, sometimes he couldn’t help but have it hammered home how he worked with a bunch of coastal elites. He hadn’t forgiven them entirely for sniffing condescendingly at Darlington, even if Ryan Millerson _had_ been a Rittenhouse asshole in the end. Another childhood idol destroyed; what a surprise.

But he managed to joke instead. “Come a long way from complaining about a ‘40’s blouse in 1937, huh?” he couldn’t help but tease her. He had enough sense to not joke about the underwire bra. She rolled her eyes, but smiled at him nonetheless.

They finished the rest of the work in near-silence, hurried back to their rooms to dress. By this point, knotting a sky blue and silver tie and doing up the charcoal grey vest, he had to think wryly that he’d worn more vests, ties, and suits in the last two years than he had in his life. Made the jump, landing in the heavily wooded hills overlooking the city that reminded Wyatt of the now-familiar rolling green ridges near Gettysburg. Breathing in autumn mountain air rather than the late summer soup of southeastern Pennsylvania, it felt crisp and wonderful. “Lake Zürich,” Flynn said with a nod towards the large body of water, the rugged crags of the Alps visible in the distance, “and the Limmat River.”

“It’s ETH Zürich now, not Poly, but it’s still ridiculously good,” Jiya commented, clicking the control button to shut the hatch and to cloak the Lifeboat. “Something like forty Nobel laureates. The school’s only like half a mile from the lake, on the east bank of the Limmat.” At the quizzical glances, she shrugged. “I was here for a conference once. Study abroad semester. Connor’s scholarships were--very generous.”

“Start at the school, then,” Lucy said with a nod. “Einstein sat his teaching certificate exams earlier this year and passed, but he’s still stuck here looking for a job. He, ah, pissed off some important people on the faculty, his would-be grad advisor Heinrich Weber included, by pretty much calling them scientific dinosaurs and not attending lectures because he thought it wasn’t worth his time.” 

“Not wrong, probably.” Jiya laughed. 

“He’ll probably be hanging around, especially if Mileva Marić is still here and they’re romantically involved.”

“She is,” Flynn confirmed for them. “Failed her exams this year, unfortunately. Barely--it was only one subject--but she’ll have to sit them again next year.”

“How far off the mark are we on chasing Emma?” Wyatt asked Jiya, seeing the sun dipping low on the horizon already. Earlier sunset given it was fall, but still, it didn’t bode well.

Jiya chewed her lip, looking frustrated. “I dialed it in as fine as we could, but to get full chrono-nav back would have cost us another three hours we couldn’t afford. So Emma’s still got like a six hour head start on us.”

Nobody said it out loud, but from their expression, everything thought, _Well, shit,_ so emphatically it was almost audible anyway. “Then let’s get going.” He wasn’t sure whether he hoped Jess was on this mission or not.

“Looks like you and I take point on this,” Flynn said, gesturing between Wyatt and himself, bowler hat in his hand as he did so. “ _Wir sind in die Schweiz, und du und ich sprechen Deutsch._ ” He had a point. As the two German speakers of the team, they’d have to do most of the talking. He nodded at that.

The problem with asking people about someone famous when they were still a nobody meant that a young university student didn’t attract much notice. But claiming to be Einstein’s American cousins, nobody asked too many questions. “It’s getting late,” Lucy told then, her eyes shadowed and even darker than usual beneath the brim of her hat. “And Einstein lived in a lot of locations around Zürich because he was here several times in his life, and even during school he moved around students do, but I think...I think it was Unionsstraßse 4 now, or had he moved to Dolderstraße? Maybe even Klosbachstraße?” She shook her head, features twisting in impatient anger. “I don’t remember. Dammit!”

Flynn moved closer to her, standing between her and the rest of them, and he couldn’t see anything the man did, but he heard him say quietly, “Lucy, it’s all right, you’re not a damn performing encyclopedia.” He half-turned back to the rest of them. “Let’s go check out Unionsstraße first.”

Asking after him at Unionsstraße 4, while Jiya and Lucy waited around the corner and kept watch in case Einstein returned, they were informed by the landlady that yes, young Einstein had been a tenant there, but he was finishing moving his things to his new lodgings in Dolderstraße 10, virtually around the corner from her direction. ”I’m sorry, _Herr_ Wayne, _Herr_ Cooper.” Because if Lucy was depicting them as Westerners rather than city slickers, why the hell not go for John Wayne and Gary Cooper? “He left only a few minutes ago.” She smiled wryly. “I don’t think he’ll be back as the only thing he left in his room is dust and a great deal of waste paper.”

“Was anyone with him?” Flynn asked her. “A redhaired woman, perhaps, about my age?”

“Or a blonde one, about mine?” Wyatt asked. Flynn shot him a pointed look as if to say _You’re not that much younger._

She shook her head. “A young man was with _Herr_ Einstein. His age, maybe a little older? I assumed he was a student at the Poly also.”

A kid? But then, Flynn said the bomber trying to attack Lincoln’s train had been young too, and there had be someone else very young to be able to go to Baltimore in the ‘90’s to screw with Flynn’s former wife’s timeline. Was that Emma’s new thing? Impressionable kids that she could manipulate? The fear hit him all the harder now. Jess wasn’t some dumb naive eighteen-year-old, and Emma had to know it. “What are you searching for those women for?”

“We’ve been less than honest with you, _gnädige Frau_. We’re not his cousins. We’re Pinkertons--” It seemed to work in most cases after the Civil War, right? But would it work in Europe? He floundered a little, glancing at Flynn and hoping like hell the damn European would be able to run with this. 

He picked it up without a hitch. “Pinkertons, yes, who have been engaged in an investigation for a while on behalf of the Rothschilds. Detective Wayne and I are after people who mean young Einstein, and others, harm. There are...certain elements originating from Münich that we’ve been tracking that are agitating against Jewish men and women, particularly academics and intellectuals, bankers, politicians--”

So apparently they were going for some of Hitler’s bullshit thirty years early, but as Grandpa Sherwin told him, the Holocaust didn’t spring out of nothing. Anti-Semitism was certainly alive and well right now in 1900. “They believe there’s no place for Jewish people in places of power and authority in Europe. They call themselves the Storm--”

“John,” Flynn said, “there’s no need to trouble her with the details. We had best be on our way to see if we can catch young Einstein in case that other boy isn’t a fellow student.” 

“Fine, _Gary_.”

“ _Gott in Himmel_ ,” she said, shaking her head, but already moving to close the door and obviously get two strange men and their sudden drama out of her life. “He’s a nice young man. Erratic, yes, but so bright and charming. I hope you find him before he comes to harm. I have to go get the rest of my washing in, though, so _gute nacht_.”

The door shut decisively, the two of them understood that was their dismissal from the stoop of the neat four-story white rowhouse. Heading around the corner, following her directions and picking up Lucy and Jiya, they headed onto Schönbühlstraße, and from there, an alley that would cut through directly to Dolderstraße, which was the likely shortcut Einstein would have taken. By now it was dark, the streetlamps lit. But there was no light on the narrow walkway, and he peered ahead in the dim light as he heard something, gesturing behind him for all of them to stay quiet as they crept closer.

“Oh, I’m sorry I’m so clumsy!” Yeah, and his German was clumsy too. He could make out two dim, shadowy figures barely ten feet ahead now, both crouched as if searching for something. 

The other one answered, sounding amused, “Never mind it, Max, the books will be--” The sound of a silenced gunshot, and a rattling, gasping moan cut off the words, one figure collapsing.

Even as he reached for his own gun, Flynn shoved past him, already charging at the other figure. He’d probably never played football, real American football, but Jesus, he gave out a tackle like a fucking wrecking ball before the shooter could ever straighten up, let alone think of running. 

Wyatt heard him snarl, “ _Stay down_ ,” in English, pinning someone to the flagstones. A light clicked on, and he saw Lucy had pulled a small flashlight from her reticule and turned it on. Well, if they could carry modern guns, he supposed they were all in on bringing helpful tools.

“You’re a fucking idiot,” he told Flynn, coming up and keeping his gun trained on their captive. “Charging someone with a gun?” Lucy’s flashlight swept over the scene. The shooter was lean, mousy brown hair. Given Flynn’s knee was planted in his back currently, couldn’t see much more. Wyatt stepped in, around a broken milk crate and a pile of books, some of which were now blood spattered, and kicked the pistol away from the kid’s hand from where he’d dropped it.

“It was a short distance, he was facing away, and he was distracted,” Flynn said coolly, letting go of his death grip on the shooter’s jacket, and climbing off him. He stayed crouched beside him, though, the implied menace still well intact, as he turned him over. “And now we have him alive and we can question him all about Rittenhouse, can’t we, _mein Herr_?” The shooter was nondescript, pleasantly regular features and pale blue eyes, early twenties. He swallowed hard at the word _Rittenhouse_ , glancing at the his captors, eyes going wide for a second.

The other man’s brown eyes were wide too, and from the blood mattered in his dark hair, and spattered all over the path, he wouldn’t be getting up again. An embarrassingly clumsy shot to the side of the forehead, whether from the dark or nerves or inexperience, but Rittenhouse’s operative had done what he had meant to do. _Shit. Shit, shit, shit._


	14. 3x04: One Stone (Lucy/Jiya: Zürich, Switzerland, October 1900)

Even without a good old twenty-first century bra rather than a corset, the fashions of the _fin de siécle_ period for women didn’t much lend themselves to aggressive pursuit and tackling of people. Not to mention Wyatt and Garcia _both_ had the habit on the chase of momentarily forgetting that their longer legs, plus Lucy and Jiya being hampered by heavy skirts, meant they lagged behind a bit. But given it had been a stealthy creep into the alley, they’d caught up by the time the shot got fired and Garcia tackled the sleeper--though was it a sleeper? 

Staring at the face of the killer, she couldn’t help but see him as a boy, maybe twenty-two at the most. The same kind of soft, still childish face she’d watched in the seats of a lecture hall, some of them rapt with attention, some of them with eyes as glazed as a tray of Dunkin Donuts. As a historian, yes, it hadn’t escaped her notice that in the past, a twenty-two year old certainly was old enough to marry, to have children, to die in a war or in poverty or of disease. But something in her looked into that upturned face of the man on his knees, and still thought _child_.

“Get up,” Wyatt said, hauling him up roughly by his arm. “And start talking.” He said it in English because Lucy assumed there was no point in continuing the charade. They knew this was no petty thief who’d murdered Einstein for--what, a crate of books? Einstein had called him “Max”. He’d known him, or at least was familiar enough to call him by name. Crouching by his side, vaguely hearing Max protest behind her, she wrapped her handkerchief over her fingers.

“What are you--” Jiya asked her.

“The first case solved by fingerprinting was in Argentina in 1892. A bloody fingerprint convicted the murderer of two little boys. So it’s becoming a thing. And it’ll be awhile yet before they can get them off skin, but still…just in case someone jumps the historical gun now that things are off-kilter...” She reached out and closed Einstein’s wide-staring eyes, while trying to keep her skirts from being stained by the bloody mess of his death.

A genius lost, but too, she looked at that face below where Max shot him and saw another boy, not the man with wild grey hair so ingrained in popular culture. It had been long years since her religious studies classes, long too since she’d attended any Jewish services in the aftermath of her near drowning, seeking God everywhere and finding Him in all places, all denominations, all faiths. But a few words came back to her, a part of the Hebrew prayer for the dead. “ _Al molay rachamim, shochayn bam’romim, ham-tzay m’nucha n’chona al kanfay Hash’china, b’ma-alot k’doshim ut-horim k’zo-har haraki-a mazhirim, et nishmat Albert…_ ” His family would bury him, and even as secular as the Einsteins were, maybe still the cantor would say the full Kel Maleh Rachamim over him. But it felt like enough for the moment.

She gathered his books too, not looking at the titles, but it was something to do, something that had been important to him, and Jiya joined in. Garcia knelt with her then too, and she glanced back to see Max slumped on the footpath with Wyatt still standing guard, one hand on his pistol. Whether they’d knocked him on the head or choked him out, their quarry was now unconscious and unable to start a ruckus. The task helped clear her head. “We need to find somewhere to hold interrogate him,” she said. “And...and we need to figure out how to fix this so we can go home and it won’t be a total disaster.”

“Physics is physics," Jiya said. "But the Lifeboat’s geo-nav sure as heck depends on satellites and the like, which aren’t gonna happen without Einst--the physics Einstein helped propose.”

“So we find someone else who can do it,” Garcia replied, handing Lucy another book. She neatly put it back in the crate. “You two know Einstein best. Who’s he got in his circle?”

She thought about it. “I mean, he had any number of collaborators and friends who helped add pieces to the puzzle. Marcel Grossmann was a fellow student, and I think he’s still here working on his PhD, but we know for sure Mileva Marić is here, and maybe she’s a good place to start?”

Jiya nodded at that, getting to her feet, picking up the shawl she’d dropped on the ground. “Fine. Garcia and I will go find her. I can talk physics, and he can talk to her. She’s got to know German that she’s here in Zürich taking classes. She’ll probably trust him more because he’s from her neck of the woods. Serbian and Croatian are close enough, right?”

“Don’t say that too loud to the wrong person if you’re in the Balkans,” Garcia muttered. “But yes, I can pose as her cousin if need be, and help find where she’s staying.” He glanced over at Lucy, expression invisible in the darkness. She heard the softness and concern in his tone, though. “Will you and Wyatt be all right here holding him, and interrogating him if he wakes up?”

She knew what he was really asking. _Will you be OK left alone with Wyatt?_ It was on the tip of her tongue to insist of course it would be fine, nobody should fuss about her. Old instincts were alive and well still, it seemed. But she hesitated, making herself think it over. She hadn’t been alone on a mission with Wyatt since the suffragette’s rally in 1919, and she’d spent so much of that trying to put up necessary walls between them to keep the friendship, walls that he ignored and burst through like some kind of obsessive Kool-Aid Man. 

Being honest, she would rather work with Garcia, with the almost effortless partnership and trust they’d built in the last months. Or with Jiya, whose friendship didn’t come with cracks in the foundation that threatened to plummet them into the abyss with an unwary step. But Wyatt was on the team, and she couldn’t argue that Jiya and Garcia should be the ones to go find Marić in this case. Jiya’s skill in science would help explain the problem far better, and Garcia’s language skills were better suited in this case than her own. She tried to not feel useless, like she hadn’t justified herself on this mission, because it felt like she hadn’t. But it was a team effort, and they weren’t going to leave her home only because she didn’t know as much about something for a mission as someone else. _Not a performing encyclopedia_ , Garcia had told her, seeing her spiraling anxiety over it, and that had helped.

She breathed in, finding her calm center, turning the idea over. 1919 made her even more wary now given she’d tried to reset the status quo to something they could both live with, and he’d run roughshod all over those efforts. She could run from it, yes, and continue to avoid the issue. But they had to work together, and she had to try to trust him again. She couldn’t always demand she go with Garcia, Jiya, or even Connor to help avoid being left alone with Wyatt. If Wyatt really was going to change this time, she should give him a chance to prove that. But damned if she’d let him push her again. She managed a smile, even if he couldn’t see it, and forced confidence into her tone. “Yeah, we’ll be fine.”

It took them only about five minutes to find someone’s shed two houses over, a house that looked neglected as if the owners were away for the fall, maybe at a resort somewhere. Thankfully, there was enough rope in there alongside the hatchet, rake, hoe, shovel, and the like to tie Max up. Looking down at him on the earthen floor, their prize, she hoped they could get the information they needed. “Good luck,” she told Jiya and Garcia as they headed off to find Marić. Sitting down, tucking a burlap sack of something she hoped wasn’t manure beneath her and grateful that her cranberry-red skirt wouldn’t show the dirt, she lit the kerosene lantern someone had left in the shed and set it on the floor. “Might as well settle in,” she told Wyatt, seeing him leaning awkwardly against the workbench. 

Standing as he was, his face was cast in shadow, but she could see the tension and awkwardness in the stiff carriage of his body. Eventually, he gave in, tugging another of the burlap sacks over to make a cushion himself, sitting down on it gingerly. She noticed he sat about as far away from her as the cramped quarters would allow. It wasn’t small enough to actively tug at her claustrophobia, but it prowled around the edges of it all the same. Having him there, only a few feet away, didn’t help either. They formed a strange triangle: her, Wyatt, and their unconscious captive, all three of them trying to keep distance from one another. She wasn’t sure in Wyatt’s case where it was respectful distance or whether he too was trying to avoid her.

“I’m assuming it’ll be awhile before he wakes up?” She gestured towards Max, if that was even his real name anyway.

“Yeah, that sleeper hold usually takes a while to come out of it, but he’ll be up sooner than he would if he’d been drugged.” She didn’t want to ask exactly how he knew that. Wyatt let out a low chuckle. “Heh. ‘Sleeper’ hold, right?” She allowed herself a short laugh at it too. “Unless you’ve got some smelling salts in that bag of yours…that’s, uh, period appropriate, right?”

She couldn’t help but smile at him trying when it came to the history. “Sadly, no. And I’m--” No, she wouldn’t mention she wasn’t wearing a corset laced too tight. Besides, that was mostly a myth anyway.

Wyatt shrugged, the motion making his shadow on the wall into a strange, lopsided creature. “Could always throw a bucket of cold water on him.”

She shook her head, dismissing the idea. “We’re not that pressed for time that we need to wake him up immediately.”

“I half-expected you to say that we shouldn’t because you think that’d be wrong.”

Maybe the overwhelmed professor she’d been nearly two years ago would have wrung her hands and said something like that. “Then maybe you don’t know me.” She shook her head. “I’m sitting in a shed with you with a Rittenhouse assassin trussed up like a deer about to be thrown on someone’s car roof, ready to help you interrogate him, and you think I’d be upset at dumping cold water on him?”

“You haven’t seen torture, Lucy.”

“Oh, haven’t I,” she snapped back, trying to keep her mind from going back to those first weeks--months?--with Rittenhouse, and something within her shivered, a darkness awakening and rising, an echo of the fury that made her put a gun to Emma’s forehead and pull the trigger. Even now she couldn’t be sorry she’d done that. Her only regret was that she hadn’t counted her shots. Torture took many different forms, though. Rittenhouse tried to make her into nothing human so that they could then remake her in their image, turn her into their creature. Shaping her like Frankenstein did to his creation, his monster. 

“What, like your new boyfriend--” Wyatt sighed heavily, shook his head. “Nope. I’m--all right.” He put his hands up in front of him, palms out in a gesture of surrender, and then turned them over, palms up, as if reaching out to her. “I don’t...Flynn. We’re doing...better, him and me, OK. You were right about some things with him. But I still don’t understand him and you.” His voice lowered to a soft plea, and he leaned forward, eyes meeting hers. “Help make me understand it?”

She almost answered him, ready to justify, to explain, to plead with him to approve. But she stopped herself, pleased with how calm her voice was when she answered him. “Why, so you can be OK with it?” He nodded, looking relieved that she understood. “Then you explain Jessica to me. So I can _be OK_ with her.” 

“Jessica’s not--”

“Isn’t she?” Lucy cut him off. “Isn’t Jessica now everything you throw at Garcia? Stole a time machine, a terrorist, a killer?” She shook her head, impatient and ready to fight, tired of giving way to Wyatt’s blind hatred of Garcia, tired of giving him explanations he didn’t deserve. “Maybe she’s even worse than he is because at least he never infiltrated us, slept with one of us, lied to all of us for _months_?” But then she backed off, bridling her rage. She didn’t want to throw Jessica under the bus, give the impression she saw nothing worth keeping in the other woman. That wasn’t the point. “I’m not asking you to explain Jessica. You love her, and you want to try to bring her back from the Dark Side of the Force. That’s fine, Wyatt, that’s all I need to know. How much you loved her was all I ever needed to know to tell you that you needed to be with her, not with me.” No matter how much it had hurt to let him go, to feel like she was nothing, hadn’t been enough to keep him. But looking at all the frustrating and hurtful things she’d seen in him since, it looked like she’d made the better choice in the end. 

“I don’t owe you any explanation for Garcia and me, Wyatt. You’ve got no right to demand that. You didn’t back in 1919 either, and I’m actually sort of sorry I gave in and told you that he and I just talked.” His smug relief at that had hurt. Like the fact that she’d been able to confide in the man Wyatt so obviously considered his rival, that she took such comfort from it, meant nothing at all. All he cared about was where Garcia’s cock had or hadn’t been, that he hadn’t been replaced as the person she’d had sex with most recently. Much as she hated that she gave i that power, that had slightly tarnished the night they spent together. The sex and falling asleep together that seemed so fun and so affectionate, bringing pieces of her back to life after feeling dead inside thanks to Rittenhouse, now was tinged with regret. “This time? You just need to accept it.” Though if he asked her if she and Garcia were sleeping together this time, she really might throw something at him. “If you’re really my friend, Wyatt, then you shouldn’t be asking ‘What do you see in them?’ I’d say ‘Do they make you happy?’ is the question you need to be asking.”

He sat there, and she could almost hear the gears turning in his head, as he shifted slightly, hands resting lightly on his thighs. “Does he make you happy?”

She’d walked into a bit of a beartrap there, because _happy_? That was a hard thing to define. She wasn’t sure she remembered exactly what it felt like, because she’d been in this war so long now that nothing seemed to escape it entirely anymore. But without question, the relationship she’d built with Garcia was the best thing she’d had in her life for months. “Yes. He does.”

“Then….that’s good. Lucy, I don’t want you to be unhappy, I just didn’t want to see you hurt…”

“Well, you kept doing a pretty good job of it yourself.” Blunt as a sledgehammer, but maybe that was what Wyatt needed, given he admitted he didn’t do well with subtle or ambiguous things. Half-truths with the edges softened hadn’t done it. “Even when I kept telling you to back off, you wouldn’t. Grace Humiston flat out said I was trying to move away from you, and you kept chasing me. She was right. We slept together once. OK, twice, but it was one night. If you were some random guy I met at a bar, you’d have no right to have any say in my life after a one-night stand.”

“It was more than a hookup,” he protested. “I felt something that night, didn’t you?”

Of course she had; so much hope, so much relief. “Yes. But let’s be honest. You care about me, and you were lonely, but you’d never entirely gotten over Jess.” She wouldn’t make that mistake again with Garcia, and how neither of them were in a rush felt like unexpected grace for its lack of pressure. “And I thought I’d lost you and Rufus. I’d spent months held prisoner by Rittenhouse. I needed to...feel something again, I felt so alone, and I care about you too. But that’s what we had, Wyatt. One night where we comforted each other. It felt good, it _was_ good. And it wasn’t a mistake, because we both felt better for having done it.” Never mind how she’d paid for it in the aftermath. At least she’d always know that it wouldn’t have worked between them, that Jessica had first claim on his heart, never regret a chance not taken. She didn’t want to hurt him either, but he needed to hear this. “But it wasn’t meant to be more. You want to be with Jessica. I want to be with Garcia. And even if Jessica walks away from you, even if Garcia and I don’t work out for some reason,” she moved a hand to indicate between the two of them, then dropped it to her side, “we’re never going to be more than friends again. That past is staying in the past, time machine or no.”

He gave a small nod, eyes downcast, looking at the lantern between them as if entranced by watching a campfire burn. It took him a long time to answer, but she felt better about that. If he’d popped out a reply in five seconds, she’d known that none of it had sunk in. “Then what do you need from me?”

Her heart twisted painfully at that, wishing so much she could have heard him say that months ago. “Don’t pick on either Garcia or me because of this. I’m thirty-five, Wyatt. I had other lovers before you. I don’t need your disapproval about my love life, or anything else, disguised as concern. And you need to listen, not argue, when I tell you to back off.” At least until things settled more back into a friendship, she’d have to keep some of those barriers in place until he understood what was and wasn’t allowed between them. “But I miss you as my friend. And I need that back too. I want us to be OK again, and not just for the sake of the team.”

Another long pause, and he looked at his hands, toying with the wedding ring he still hadn’t taken off. That told her all she needed to know about him not giving up on Jessica. Though Garcia still wore his, didn’t he? But he’d be ready to take it off someday. That would tell her everything. “I miss us too. But you can’t have it both ways with telling me you need me but you need me to back off. So I might need some space. While I figure this out, and how to...to be with you again. Neither of us has had much breathing room since we lost Rufus. So if I’m not right there for you because I’ve backed off a few steps for a while, I need you to not blame me for that.”

The momentary flicker of irritation that he was in no position to make demands passed. At least here he was, trying to articulate things for once about what he needed rather than being a battering ram expecting to get his way. And for them to be friends again, it had to be a partnership. Just like she couldn’t hold Garcia’s past over him as leverage, she couldn’t expect to be on a high horse with Wyatt. She’d have to forgive him, trust him again. “All right. That’s fair.” She thought about it for a moment. “But do me another favor.”

“What?”

“Call him ‘Garcia’. He’s part of this team. He almost died trying to get Jiya back. He helped get you back on the team when Denise benched you. He stood up for you. I’m not demanding you be best friends, but I think you owe him the respect to call him by his actual name just like you do the rest of us. We’ve all screwed up and hurt each other, but we’re all in on this fight. So we’re all equals now.” She’d kept the journal from them. Rufus had kept Rittenhouse’s infiltration of Mason Industries secret. She remembered Wyatt’s indignation at that, his disgust at saying he couldn’t trust either of them. Sometimes she felt a strange dissonance, like she’d separated from herself for a moment, looking down on herself like a bird from up above, so surprised at this woman who could coolly sit there and assert demands rather than issue apologies. 

“I’ll try.”

“Every time you don’t, I’m calling you ‘Logan’ until you get it,” she warned him. She’d let him get away with things for too long.

He smiled wryly. “Guess he was right, and you are too. You _have_ changed.”

Absurdly enough, “Wicked” ran through her head at that: _can’t say if I’ve been changed for the better, but yeah, I’ve definitely been changed for good._ “We all have.” Even Wyatt now too was finally crossing his own Rubicon. 

They sat in companionable silence for a long time, probably an hour or more, Wyatt pulling a deck of playing cards from his pocket as they started a game of War. They’d found a while ago that killing time sometimes was one of the hardest parts. The faint groan from Max shut both of them up. “Guess he’s coming around,” Wyatt said, getting a hand down and pushing up to his feet. As she hurriedly gathered the cards to stow them, Wyatt pulled off his suit jacket.

She couldn’t help but ask. “Do you _really_ need to take off your jacket to beat someone up? I mean, I’ve seen both you and Garcia brawling just fine in a three-piece.”

He laughed, leaning in close to speak lowly as he hung the jacket on top of the rake’s handle. “Jacket off, rolling up the sleeves? Man, it’s all theater. Get ‘em anxious, maybe they start talking.” Rittenhouse hadn’t bothered with that. There had been no beatings, no blood. They’d probably known she was stubborn enough to try to resist that. She firmly shoved that to the back of her mind. She wouldn’t think about it right now. She needed to be here, focused on the mission, focused on scraping up some solution that didn’t devastate the future. 

“Do you want to try to good cop/bad cop him?”

“I’m assuming you’re good cop?”

Wryly she noticed Wyatt never even assumed for a moment that she could be the dark bitch-goddess coldly ordering a man to do the dirty work for her. Amy talked about it, hadn’t she? How men never believed in violence in women, how they laughed at it. Well, she’d make it happen in this case, because too much depended on this. She could become this boy’s living nightmare, the bitch-goddess of vengeance. “No, Wyatt, I’m going to be bad cop. I ask the questions, you intimidate him on my behalf if need be, until you start offering him a way out.” She eyed Wyatt, seeing a flicker of unease in his blue eyes. “He’ll expect me to be good cop. It’ll unsettle him more if we turn expectations on its ear, won’t it?”

His gaze on hers, he nodded. “All right. We try it your way.” Digging deep inside, she found that streak within her, cold and dark and hard as anthracite coal, waiting only for the right spark to ignite. She’d shied away from it until it finally exploded into life after Emma slaughtered her mother and Rufus. _You’ve met your own darkness. You know what you’re capable of now._ The trick, Garcia told her, was to acknowledge and control the darkness, not to let it control you. He readily acknowledged he’d almost lost that battle. But she was tired of fearing herself and what she was capable of doing. Tired of her mother and Wyatt and so many others telling her to stay a cramped little bonsai, neatly pruned and twisted into their desired shape, tired of being told that it was being a _good girl_ or else she was nothing. She was in charge of herself.

Seeing Max’s head start to loll, and that he was coming around, she knelt beside him, sitting back on her haunches. His eyes finally opened, and he looked at her without fear, an overconfident boy. “Hello,” she said, smiling at him, thinking of a shark, all jagged teeth and cold black eyes and sandpaper hide ready to scrape someone raw, trying to project that unfeeling menace. “Max, is it? We’re going to talk about Rittenhouse.” She grabbed him by the jaw, staring directly into his eyes, then jerked her head in Wyatt’s direction. “Or else my friend here is going to make this far more painful than it needs to be.”

~~~~~~~~~~

Jiya’s thoughts were all awhirl, trying to keep step with Garcia in the dark, glad he’d slowed down for her. They were headed back to the short walk to Unionsstraße 4 first anyway, and neither of them was in a rush, trying to collect their thoughts before launching into a plan of attack. “This is bad.”

“I’m aware.” But his voice seemed almost too calm.

“No, I think you really aren’t.” The more she turned it over, the worse it got. “She’s stranded us here, Garcia. If there are no satellites in 2018, the geo-nav computer doesn’t work to get us home, and if there’s no quantum physics, Connor can’t manually pilot us, because Connor _isn’t_ our Connor and Mason Industries never existed.” Her mind kept churning relentlessly, scientifically, through the ripples. “Plus...I mean, I hate to say it, but wasn’t your mom in aerospace with Lockman, and that’s how she met your da--” 

“Jiya, _I’m aware_.” Words as cold and heavy as an Icelandic glacier; it was the harshest she’d ever heard his tone towards her, but she’d cut him some slack. Dealing with a global scientific crisis and also the possibility of her own existence being erased would probably make her a bit curt with people too.

“I’m sorry.”

He shook his head, turning the corner back onto Unionsstraße. “Don’t worry about it.” Odd how he took the idea of not existing that casually. Or rather, he’d exist because he was here, but he’d be a ghost when he got back, no paper, no records, nobody with memories of him. “Much as Emma would likely enjoy screwing up my existence as a side benefit, is that really it? Assuming the Mothership’s already back in 2018, Emma knows that physics exists, but I don’t know how good she’ll be at it--”

“She was an engineer. An extremely talented one, but I don’t think she can solve her way out of recreating an entire satellite GPS system that may not even exist if it’s worst case scenario. That’s decades of work.”

“Including my mom’s,” he said, sounding dryly amused. “So Rittenhouse is dead in the water too. Was she betting her entire ability to time travel just to get rid of us? Flattering, but a bit arrogant to assume that’s all.”

“Don’t know, but if we have to stay in 1900…hey, at least I’ve done it before. I’d suggest we get back to America because Lucy and I don’t know German and, you know, things go completely to crap in fourteen years in Europe anyway.”

“Oh, World War One’s big news in the Balkans still. I got taken on several field trips to Sarajevo as a kid. Heard all about the Black Hand and the rest.” Pausing at the door of Einstein’s former residence, he looked over her shoulder at her. “We fight this until we go down fighting. That’s the way it goes. But if that’s what happens to us...Jiya, I’m sorry. About Rufus.”

He sounded sincere, and she didn’t doubt him on it. “Thanks,” but her throat felt painfully tight. She could survive here. It would be even easier than the last time, because she’d have friends with her. But this time her missing Rufus with a soul-deep ache wouldn’t be tempered with the knowledge that somewhere in the future he was living a good life, hoping he was happy and safe. He was dead, and unless they fixed this, he would always be dead, twelve years in the past, half a world away, nearly four months ago. She envied Lucy in that moment that if this was their fate, she’d at least have Garcia here with her, and they could make a good life together.

The landlady answered the door. “ _Guten Abend, Frau_ Blücher,” Garcia said, and despite how dire things were, she couldn’t help but instinctively want to either cackle with laughter, neigh like a horse, or maybe both. _Dammit, “Young Frankenstein”_. Forcing herself to be serious because a man was dead and their futures were on the line, she stood there, picking up maybe one word in five because of its similarity to English, watching Garcia talk and gesture.

From the appalled and then saddened look on her face, he’d told Blücher that Einstein was dead, and _Polizei_ likely meant he’d told her to call the police. She nodded, and carefully closed the door.

“Well?” she asked him.

“I told her that the fanatics had gotten to Einstein already, and we found him dead in that alley with the murderer fled. Told her to call the police. I said they’d likely be after Marić since our investigation implied they had some kind of understanding between them, and that she was in danger of being a target herself from what the Nazis will so charmingly call _Rassenschand_ : ‘race shame’ from a Christian, even Eastern Orthodox like Marić is, being involved with someone Jewish. She gave us her address and directions. Said it’s about a ten minute walk.”

“And how exactly did you explain me to her?”

“I told her you were a Pinkerton also, Detective Poirot.” 

“Agatha Christie, huh? Good pick. She totally ignored me, though. Really funny how that works for brown people.” Rufus used to joke that being black and therefore invisible to most people on missions was his greatest asset. Seeing him looking at her with a trace of inquisitive awkwardness on his face, she sighed. “Keep at it. It’d be easier if Lucy was with us. They’d assume I’m her maid, or maybe some half-caste who can’t marry suitably, so I've taken up as a ladies' companion.”

“Kate Warne proved there were female Pinkertons, so we’ll stick with that if we’re questioned.” He picked up his pace, long legs carrying him along frustratingly quickly compared to her speed, but she kept up, well aware of the urgency and what was at stake.

Knocking on the door of Marić’s lodgings, the landlord answered, a small man with a somewhat ratty blue dressing gown thrown on over his pajamas, glasses a bit askew from where he’d clearly put them on after being woken up. Garcia didn’t wait, launching into a rapid-fire explanation that got them promptly escorted into the parlor. Perched on an uncomfortably spindly horsehair-stuffed chair, they waited only about ten minutes before a young woman came in.

She was short, strong-featured, her dark hair pulled back in a rapid and careless twist, quickly dressed in a shirtwaist and skirt. It wouldn’t do to receive visitors in nightclothes. As Marić headed for a chair of her own, she moved briskly enough, but with a pronounced, rolling limp. When Jiya looked down at her boot peeking out from under her skirt, one obviously had a much thicker sole to make up for a shorter leg. “ _Dobra večer, Gospodinja_ Marić,” Garcia said, launching into yet another language, one that suddenly made Marić brighten, chattering right back at him. It must have been Croatian, or Serbian, or whatever they wanted to call it.

At a question from him, Marić suddenly switched to French. “So your name isn’t truly Gary Cooper, is it, Detective?”

“Godzimir Kovačević.” Garcia’s smile, by the gaslights of the parlor, put Jiya in mind of a giant but sheepish schoolboy. “I changed it in America.”

“And you?”

“Helena Poirot.” She thanked Allah in that moment that her parents had also taught her French, commonly as it was spoken in Lebanon.

“I’m so sorry we were rattling on and excluding you from the conversation. French will serve, though, yes? I’m afraid I’m not good at English at this point.” She nodded in reply.

“My fault. Rude of me to start with our mother tongue,” Garcia answered smoothly. “But I figured it might be best for you to hear some of the sounds of home first as comfort. I’m afraid Detective Poirot and I have some bad news for you.”

Marić now finally sat down, hands folded neatly in her lap, fingers gripping each other tight, spine rigidly straight. “I figured that Pinkerton agents wouldn’t be asking me to rise from my bed for trivial things. My father?”

“It’s _Monsieur_ Einstein, we’re afraid.” She took the plunge. “He’s dead. Killed in an alley while moving the last of his belongings to his new place in Dolderstraße.” 

Marić gasped, hand covering her mouth, dark eyes filling with horror. “Albert is dead? Murdered?” 

Garcia looked at Jiya intently, inclining his head at little as if to tell her something. It took her longer than she’d like to figure it out. He was deferring to her, as the scientist, to figure out how to break the even worse news that they really, really needed someone to make sure Einstein’s work kept going more or less on schedule.

To hell with it. Garcia said she’d been right there with Einstein early on coming up with physics beyond the scope of hard reality. If nobody else in the world would be able to wrap their mind around it, a young dreamer of a theoretical physicist should. “We didn’t tell you the truth. You’re a scientist. A researcher. What if I told you that space and time aren’t constants?”

“That’s what Albert and I have been discussing,” she said, voice surprisingly steady. “That these things, and reality itself, is relative.” She gave a snort of amusement. “I think that three hundred years ago we’d have been burnt at the stake for heresy. As is, we only annoy the faculty at the Poly and their dusty notions of a fixed, unchanging Newtonian universe.”

“All right, you’re with me so far. Space-time is relative, and it’s like fabric. It can be warped. Stretched. Looped back around. Even maybe folded in on itself.” After all, that was what the Lifeline would be about, if they got to make it. “If you can make a bridge between two points in space and time--” It still sounded insane to say it aloud, and she’d never said it in 1888, well aware they’d consider her a lunatic at worst, a bizarre eccentric at best. She’d gotten used to keeping it secret, both in the 19th and 21st centuries, and undoing that lock to say it openly was a struggle.

The ticking of the grandfather clock was the only sound for what felt like a good thirty seconds. “Mr. Wells’ ‘The Time Machine’ came out a few years ago. It’s a very interesting read, but clearly, he’s a novelist, not a scientist, so everyone dismissed it as fantastic. But I believe what you’re telling me is that the time travel he describes _is_ possible.” 

Garcia finally broke in. “Yes. We’re here from 2018. We came to stop an organization that’s trying to affect history. Unfortunately, apparently one of their missions was to kill Einstein, and we were too late to save him.”

“What effect does that have?” Still remarkably calm, but Jiya recognized the pull in Marić that she’d felt herself, the eager lure of pure discovery and inquiry that helped shut everything out, no matter how painful.

“He would have put together all the pieces that make time travel, and so many other things, eventually possible. Without that, without that theory of relativity and all the doors it opens, we’re stuck here in 1900. Our machine can’t travel. Our world is going to be different in ways we can’t even imagine. So we need you, and maybe others, to try to carry on the work. Make that discovery, publish the papers, get the science out there and get things back on the right track.” She reached into the back of her skirt waistband. “We’ll make certain you get his things, but--this looked like a personal notebook.” When she’d skimmed it in the alley, obviously he was already putting together some notes and musings that would one day lead to the motherlode. She’d snagged it, thinking it would help, rather than see it vanish into someone’s fireplace or police evidence files. She held the brown leather-bound journal out to Marić. “I’ll give you everything I can remember too about the theories and the physics.”

Now Marić crumpled, shoulders dropping, a strangled sob escaping her throat. Jiya saw, as if for the first time, how young she was. Barely more than a girl, twenty or so, someone who’d just had a man she loved murdered in an alley, and then told the fate of the world now rested on her shoulders. She’d crashed herself once she’d gotten back from Chinatown, hadn’t she, and gotten through the necessity of piloting them all home?

“Mileva,” Garcia had gotten up from his chair, kneeling beside her chair on the carpet of the parlor, and fishing in his pocket for a handkerchief which he held out to her. He said something softly to her in Croatian again, then resumed speaking French. “I know how this hurts. Believe me, we both know. My name, my real name, is Garcia--my mother was American, but I grew up in Split, like I said. This is Jiya. And this organization, Rittenhouse, that killed Albert also killed my wife, Lorena, and Jiya’s fiance, Rufus.” Not quite, but close enough to count.

She hadn’t considered that, only the practicality of the scientist and the Croatian teaming up to go talk to a Serbian physicist, and she doubted he had either. But now it seemed inevitable that it should have been the two of them--the ones who’d seen their lovers murdered by Rittenhouse. Seeing him so oddly gentle about it was something new, but it didn’t seem entirely strange. ‘We understand,” she agreed, fighting the swell of emotion that seeing that grief in someone else threatened to bring up again, like nothing had healed at all. Had it been like that for him, seeing her in Chinatown and after? “My--Rufus was a scientist too. A traveler with us.” 

She took the book from Jiya, holding it loosely in one hand, looking down at it. “How do you think I can be the one to take his place?”

“You’re bright,” Garcia argued fiercely. “You sought out books to teach yourself when none were readily made available to you. You fought your way into a place at the Gymnasium in Zagreb, as the only female student there. You’re one of the first women at the Poly. You were working with him on developing those theories.”

Marić laughed, a sort of sad, wet sound, and blew her nose into the handkerchief. “You’re very kind, but you’re a man. You don’t understand what it’s like. A woman has to work ten times as hard to receive a fraction of the acclaim and respect a man gets by default as virtue of his sex.”

“I understand,” Jiya said. “And maybe he hasn’t been through it himself, but he grew up with a mom experiencing that.”

“She was a widowed when she wasn’t much older than you, left with a young son, and every step of the way someone told her that she didn’t belong. That she should go home and take care of her son, and find a new husband.” She noticed he didn’t mention that his mother remarried. “But she didn’t. She found the books, same as you, and kept going.”

“I know what it’s like. I’m a woman, I’m not white, I’m the daughter of immigrants.” Even past 2000, it wasn’t like being a woman in STEM wasn’t a constant uphill battle for legitimacy, for a place, and Marić was right. “I had to fight for my place too.” She’d been lucky that Connor had found her, but that hadn’t smoothed her couse nearly as much as even the average man he gave a scholarship. “But you, me, his mom, we all decided that we were too passionate about it, and we weren’t going to be told ‘no’. This is your chance to be a part of something truly great, to make your mark on history.” 

Her brow furrowed thoughtfully. “So I didn’t do it before, did I? What became of me?” She glanced at Garcia, trying to throw the ball back to him. She knew the physics. He apparently knew her personal history.

He gave an awkward nod at that, and sighed. “Sorry for being indelicate, but he would have gotten you pregnant. So you dropped out, had the child in secret. You two married a couple of years later when he finally gets a stable job. You collaborate for a few years, but by 1905, the year of his major papers, your name was nowhere to be found on them. By 1914, you’ve separated, he’s taken up with his cousin Elsa, who he marries after you divorce. He...wasn’t good to you, I’m afraid.”

Marić froze, looking like Einstein had just been murdered again before her eyes. “He was…you’re...you’re not lying?”

“I wish I was,” he told her tiredly. “I don’t enjoy causing you more pain right now, believe me, but it seems he shut you out over time. Whatever he was like now, he didn’t want to share the work, or the glory, in the end. And I suspect without your degree, you eventually gave in and felt like you were lesser than him.”

“I used to tease Albert that when we’d be married, we’d truly be ‘one stone.’ _Ein Stein_. It seems that would become true in a way I didn’t expect.” She gave a choking sob, fingers clenched in Garcia’s handkerchief. “And...maybe I knew, because he had this way of sweeping me off my feet, of making this place where only we two and the work we would make together existed. So beautiful, so pure. That became the reality, and this world, the silly plodding classes, became the dream. But I would always crash back to earth. Make excuses to the professors for the lectures I’d missed, try to placate _Herr_ Weber when he started to dislike me for my association with Albert, try to ask classmates for notes they wouldn’t give me because they don’t want me here.”

“When it’s a man, he’s an eccentric genius, when it’s a woman, she’s a flighty idiot,” Jiya said grimly, hating how little things had changed in 120 years. 

Marić smiled sadly, nodding to acknowledge the truth in it, eyes meeting Jiya’s, and she felt that kinship between them. “Albert lived in a dream, a _beautiful_ dream. He could afford to. His path was always made harder because of his family being Jewish. We talked about being outcasts. Still, the world would always be kinder to him than to me.”

“It was to Rufus too. I loved him, I love him still, but that didn’t mean he didn’t take me for granted or shut me out of some things.” Like the Lifeboat, and Marić’s eyes narrowed in sympathy at that. “But Albert? When you feel like your life is out of control when you’re in a re--when you’re courting someone, it’s not right between you.” She was aware of Garcia sitting there, listening quietly, and felt grateful he was smart enough to not insert his opinion where it didn’t belong. “You’ll find someone who’ll love you equally, who won’t try to...to consume you.”

“I failed the Mathematics portion of my exams,” she said in a low groan. “Because I was so caught up in that dream-world. I can retake them next year, yes, but everyone will hold it against me. The woman who couldn’t keep up. How will I make anyone listen to me now that I’ve shown I couldn’t measure up to their standards, let alone exceed them?”

“You keep fighting,” Jiya told her quietly. “Because you wouldn’t let them make you back down before, and because this matters to you. And you’ll find the people who’ll respect you and your work, and will help you bring that dream of yours and Albert’s to life. Just like I’m going to keep fighting to try and find a way to bring Rufus back to me.”

She watched Marić’s chin tip up in determination, their eyes meeting again with another of those moments of wordless communion. “Yes. Perhaps we wouldn’t have withstood the test of time as husband and wife, or even colleagues, but it _is_ a beautiful dream, and if he gave his life for it, he deserves for it to become real.” She stood and walked over to Garcia, handed him back his handkerchief, eyes red rimmed but now dry again. “And also I want to spite the beasts who killed him, and killed the ones you loved. I will grieve for him, but when that’s done, I’ll speak to Marcel and others and see if we can keep that dream alive. Albert has--had a talent for making us all want to believe in it.”

It took maybe another half-hour for Jiya to reiterate everything she knew about Einstein’s theories and proofs, and even Garcia managed to interject a few things, and Marić scribbled it all down in a notebook of her own. She worried it still wouldn’t be enough. Different things to be taught the ideas as proven in a classroom, and to try to remember the exact proofs used. But she’d have to put faith in Marić and whoever she collaborated with, just as Einstein had put faith in the bits he’d drawn from everyone and stitched together to make his theorems. “I’ll of course credit him, especially for the work in his own notebook, but it feels a bit like cheating to claim some of these ideas you’re giving me as mine,” she said with a shy smile, but Jiya was gratified to see the fire of determination in her eyes. She’d also watched her eyes light up with wonder at the science, her imagination obviously racing in excitement.

“You likely contributed to those ideas in the end and weren’t credited, so let’s call it fair play,” Garcia told her with a smirk. “Besides, credit’s deserved. You’ll have a lot of work ahead of you to make it happen. _Koji se kamen premeće, neće se mahovinom obrasti._ If you now won’t be one stone, then you might as well be a rolling stone.” 

“You can’t always get what you want, but you’ll find sometimes you get what you need.” He laughed at that, shot a conspiratorial grin at Jiya, obviously enjoying her rock’n’roll joke.

It felt so tenuous leaving it like that, but short of staying for another three years or so to make sure things went well, they’d have to take it on faith that they’d left it in the hands of the best possible person to keep the fight going. Marić surprised them both by hugging them as they said their goodbyes, telling Jiya, “I hope that this works, and that you get your Rufus back.” Garcia told her something as she hugged him, but it was in Croatian, and she smiled shyly, saying something in reply that made him actually blush in return.

Back on the street, she glanced over at him in the glow of the streetlamps. “We’ve done what we can. Let’s go see if Wyatt and Lucy have figured anything out with the Rittenhouse agent.”

“Might as well. See if there’s anything else we need to do before we leave to undo their mission plan,” he said, a grim look coming over his features after his awkward dorkishness from Marić faded. “Plus we haven’t caught one alive since Wyatt and Rufus did in 1981. It’s a good opportunity to get more about Emma’s plans, if we can.”


	15. 3x04: One Stone (Lucy/Jiya: Zürich, Switzerland, October 1900)

She wasn’t Garcia, who didn’t have to work at all to be intimidating to his very bones, tall and dark and with the way he moved with that sinuous, lethal grace. He could terrify someone at a glance simply by showing up, like he had with her at the _Hindenburg._ She wasn’t even Wyatt, who despite his “aw shucks” boyish looks carried himself with the taut, alert air of a soldier that warned, as Garcia taught her to say in Croatian over that bottle of vodka, _Nemoj me jebat. Don’t fuck with me._ She was Lucy Preston, untenured academic turned secret agent, five foot five on a good day. As a teacher, she’d relied more on winning her students’ goodwill rather than trying to cow them out of their snarky-ass impertinence or total apathy. 

But she’d changed since then. Thrown into the crucible of the _Hindenburg_ and beyond, fired and forged and hammered. She’d beaten the plowshare into a sword, and so be it. She’d seen and done and endured things like other people couldn’t imagine. So when she looked at this kid, this agent, she saw someone still half a child, but she also saw Rittenhouse. Someone who’d sold their soul to their insanity, who’d coolly and deliberately planned to travel to 1900, find Albert Einstein, and murder him once his guard was down.

She let go Max’s jaw and stared into his wide-set watery blue eyes, seeing him fight an instinctive smile at her trying to be threatening. God, she was so tired of being underestimated and dismissed. “How long have you been with Rittenhouse?”

He looked up at her, eyes narrowing. He’d missed a little bit of stubble near his right ear when he’d shaved that morning. In 2018? Here in 1900? “You’re Lucy, right? Carol Preston’s daughter?”

“I’m the one asking the questions here.”

“I mean, I know Emma’s not a big fan, but why are you fighting us? You should be with us, it’s your place--”

Something within her screamed in outrage at it. How many times had she heard that when she was in their hands? “You don’t get to tell me my place. And I guess you spouting that line tells me you were in Rittenhouse for longer than these last couple of months.” He sat there silently, eyeing her with no particular fear or wariness. “Who recruited you?”

A slight smile played about his lips. “Hey, I respect a woman in charge, but seriously--”

She hit him. Not a ladylike slap like other women in this time might deal out to impudent suitors, but a strike with the whole force of her arm and the rotation of her body behind it. Just like Garcia had taught her. “I’m sorry, are you actually under the impression I’m here just to screw around?” No, she didn’t need Wyatt to do this for her either, and she found the cold, calm purpose within her. “Let me clear that up for you. We’re not the police, and even if we were, this is 1900 and very few people give a shit about suspects being roughed up. Even Teddy Roosevelt’s reforms of the NYPD didn’t really scratch that. Nobody is coming to save you.” They’d used that line on her. They hadn’t been wrong. Nobody had come for her. Rufus and Wyatt had no idea where to look, or even if she was alive. And Garcia had been locked away, though relentless as he was, she suspected he’d have tried to find her until he’d seen her either alive or dead.

She saw the redness blooming in his skin from where she’d hit, and the way he worked his jaw briefly against the pain. Now she saw it in his eyes and the change in the set of his head and shoulders, less cocky than before, that he started to take her more seriously. “So, tell me, what’s your real name?”

She heard Wyatt stir behind her. “You might want to start talking.” A faint thread of reluctance in his tone, as if trying to reconcile her with his picture of what she could and should be. But at least he was going with it. “She’s not kidding.”

“I’m not.” She eyed him again, letting him see her gaze, trying to make it as hard and cold as possible. “If you were with Rittenhouse long enough to know my mother, to know what my supposed birthright is and the power they kept trying to shove on me, you can imagine what I’m capable of doing.” She’d been their princess, as Emma kept mocking her, and so Carol and the rest of Rittenhouse expected her to someday become a queen. A dark queen, fierce and cunning and remorseless. She’d rejected Rittenhouse and everything it stood for, but that didn’t mean she had to reject that part of her that had found a way to stand strong. “And if you’ve been around long enough to know Garcia Flynn and exactly what he’s capable of, maybe you should consider this. He answers to _me_.” 

She hated saying it. She told herself it was because Rittenhouse was a strict hierarchy, no room for equals or partners. Because she and Garcia were partners. Sometimes she followed his lead, knowing his instincts and experience were worth more than their weight in gold. But she’d seen too how he could defer, waited for her, followed her lead. She’d gotten a giddy thrill at the power of it in Salem, commanding him to go after the Popes with a wordless nod. Denise had put commanded that he’d follow her lead on that mission, and he had. They’d become friends, and slowly were moving towards more than friends, and the scales became better balanced. The power of having him at her command then felt sweet, like maple sugar melting on her tongue, especially after being so powerless in Rittenhouse’s hands, and so powerless against Jessica’s return. But she’d needed a partner, someone who deferred when it made sense and took the lead when it made sense. Someone who gave her strength by standing by her side, by choosing to be there, rather than expecting her to step back, or putting her on a pedestal. She didn’t need someone who was blindly hers to command.

But if their prisoner had been in Rittenhouse long enough to see the days when Garcia had cut a bloody swath through history, left a trail of Rittenhouse bodies in his wake, been the only one to shake their foundations and leave them trembling in fear for their cult’s survival, relentless and remorseless and grim as the wrath of God, making him think that she had him _on a leash_ like Wyatt had so derisively said couldn’t hurt. She kept her eyes on his face, smiled slowly. “So you can talk to me, or you can talk to him when he gets back, and after having to clean up the mess you’ve tried to make here, he’s going to be, mmm, _very annoyed_ at having to deal with you. So let’s talk. What was the plan in killing Einstein?”

“I’m not telling you--”

She hit him again, right on the spot where she’d first hit, aware that it would sting the rising bruise. “Try that one again.”

“Lucy--”

She looked over her shoulder at Wyatt, not sure whether he was playing his good cop role or genuinely protesting. As if he should--she doubted he’d asked people nicely either, before the Lifeboat or even after, when she hadn’t wanted to know. “Yes?”

Wyatt’s lips pressed together in a thin line. “You’re not giving him much chance to talk.” He bent at the waist, leaning down into Max’s line of vision. “I’d start talking. She’s right. There’s no way out of this except to cooperate. I mean, killing Einstein? What the heck did they tell you to convince you that was a good idea? I mean, did you accept this was probably a one-way ticket to 1900? But you’ve got to have family back in 2018, man. You have any idea how much this could have messed up their lives, their entire world?”

“It’s definitely one way ticket. You think Emma’s actually coming back for you in the Mothership? If we hadn’t caught you, you’d have lived out your life here.” She shook her head, suddenly tired. All those sleepers, all those fanatics, all dead in the past, thrown away by Rittenhouse like so much trash. “You think she gives a damn about anyone but herself? She’s used you to do her dirty work and here you are taking the fall. Must have been one hell of a recruitment speech. So convince me of how killing Einstein was going to make the world _better_ , given that you shot Rittenhouse in the foot too with this one. Nobody’s going to be time traveling without those developments in physics happening on time--no pun intended. And given how much of America’s post World War Two superiority depended on the space race, you’ve probably thrown that off-kilter too.” 

Now she saw something in him flicker, doubt trickling in like flood water seeping in through the cracks of a foundation. Caught in a current far too strong, and only now was he realizing it and starting to panic. He looked down, mumbled something.

“What?” Wyatt asked, squatting down beside him. “C’mon. No sense not talking. We’re going to fix what you did, but this is your only way out.”

“It wasn’t going to change physics itself. I was supposed to take Einstein’s place,” he said. “Console his girlfriend the physicist and marry her, collaborate with her and his buddies, be the one to write his papers. Get the credit for it. I trained for months for this. Learning German especially.”

It hit like a bursting firework, everything illuminated all at once. “You were going to give Rittenhouse a controlling interest in everything that comes from those papers--aerospace especially, I’m assuming?” He sat there like a marble status for a long moment, and then gave a barely perceptible nod, hair falling in his eyes. He blew on it, trying to get it out of the way without his bound hands. She gave in and brushed it back for him, not even thinking that maybe it would be better to let him keep being annoyed by the small discomfort. 

It made a horrible sort of sense. Once Emma saw that Max had replaced Einstein, they probably would have seeded more Rittenhouse people into the past in the ‘30’s or beyond to become Max’s proteges, and help create a Rittenhouse presence in the aerospace industry. It could have given them access, or even firm control, over too many things. Affecting the course of the Cold War even more to put America that much further ahead of Russia in dominating the world. Remote-guided weaponry, and perhaps how and on whom it was used. Intelligence--far more so than the on-the-ground infiltration they’d made of government agencies. If they owned the satellites, they had access to anything that came through them, whether images or data or words. It made a shiver run down her spine that she had to suppress so Max wouldn’t see that moment of weakness. “Is your name actually Max?”

Now he looked tired, and vulnerable, and far too young again. “Matt,” he said. “I...it’s Matt.” It was like a switch had flipped. He’d fed into the lies. Now it was like waking from a dream, shaking off some of the lies Rittenhouse had spun him about their glorious plan, how critical he would be in changing the world, and finding out that he was just a kid tied up in someone’s garden shed, abandoned and alone and helpless. It could have been her. According to the Rittenhouse plan, it _should_ have been her. Jessica had been indoctrinated from childhood, as had John Rittenhouse. Ethan, Benjamin, Carol, all dragged into the fold when they were late in their teens: old enough to be of use, but young enough to be pliable. She’d been thirty-four and a half before her mother explained Lucy’s supposed place in the grand scheme, twice the seemingly traditional age of initiation. 

_Why did you wait, Mom?_ Given how enthusiastically and fiercely she’d tried to drag Lucy into it in those frenzied summer and autumn months, she hadn’t held back because of doubt about Rittenhouse. She hadn’t tried to protect Lucy from Rittenhouse, had she? _Did you think I wasn’t strong enough to hear?_ It made no sense, and she’d never know, could never get those answers. But she thought of herself at seventeen, so eager for Carol’s approval, so eager to matter, and she had the sick feeling that had Carol couched her words right, she too could have been caught in the Rittenhouse snare, lost and so deluded she didn’t even know what a monstrous thing she’d become a cog in voluntarily. Or maybe not a simple cog, given she’d supposedly been poised to inherit the whole damn thing. Which made even less sense of why Carol held everything back. _There but for the grace of God…_

She shook it off only with effort, put the “stern professor” tone into her voice, demanding compliance. No need to scare the shit out of him further right now, but she wouldn’t let him off the hook either. “How did you get into Rittenhouse? And why you for this mission?”

“My father’s Rittenhouse. The Benders are really low level compared to either the Cahills or the Prestons, but...we’ve been in it for three generations.”

“So you were born to it.” Like her, like Benjamin, like Ethan, like Carol, even like Doc, who she regretted now never knowing her real name, even if it was safer that way. Born to lower-level Rittenhouse gentry, it sounded like, and like most people throughout history told they weren’t high on the ladder, probably hungry to move up in Emma’s new regime.

He smiled, but it seemed like a sad and broken thing. “Just like you.” That barely suppressed shudder went down her spine again. “And I studied physics, so I was a natural choice on this one.” 

“How many agents does Emma have?” she asked. “What else is she planning?”

His shoulders rose and fell in a dismissive shrug. “It’s not like she tells us much beyond what she has planned for us on the mission. She’s in charge, you know?” She noticed he didn’t answer her question about how many agents Emma had on hand. She suspected the quiver couldn’t be that full after the massive purge last year with all the arrests, and then probably more people leaving after Emma murdered her way to power.

“On a ‘need to know’ basis,” Wyatt’s voice was soft. “So...you’re just a soldier taking orders, huh?” It was on the tip of her tongue to point out that the “following orders” defense hadn’t worked since 1945 and the Nuremberg Trials ruled it legally inadmissible, thank you very much, but she held back from that historical tidbit. 

“More or less.”

“Where’s your base?” Wyatt demanded.

Now a spark of animation entered Matt’s eyes again, and he tipped his chin up in almost childish defiance, a sort of proud arrogance in his expression. She’d seen that look on the face of Rittenhouse people before, that fanatic fire of conviction that they were the chosen stewards of making the world a better place against the forces of division and chaos and pandering to the lowest common denominator who were too dumb and ill-informed to be trusted with the tiller to the ship of state. “No, I’m not telling you that. You caught me, so I failed the second half of my mission. I told you what I told you only so you can patch that gap with the physics and get things back on track, because I know Emma can’t because she’s back in 2018 already. I don’t want to endanger more missions, or America’s place in the world. But don’t think you’ve convinced me to turn because you hit me a few times, and tell me I’m nobody to Rittenhouse. You think I don’t know that? That I haven’t always accepted the mission is all that matters? That’s what happens when you become a part of something bigger than you. That’s what you turned your back on, _traitor_. So beat the shit out of me all you want, or send your pet assassin Flynn to do it. Hold a gun to my head and kill me, even. Whatever you want. I’m not selling out.” 

He sounded so much like an actor delivering a speech, and she had the feeling he’d been sitting there preparing those words, thinking they’d be dramatic and perfect rather than sounding like cliche tough guy talk from action movie. Just another way he came across as young and naive. She held back a glum sigh. No, it would have been too easy to just assume they’d broken through his programming with a few well-placed darts of logic. He’d wavered just enough, recognizing his mission had failed and that it put the world in too much danger to not slap a patch over it, so he’d given them that much. 

Now she wavered too. The very darkest part of her, the part of her that she feared was David Rittenhouse woven into her very DNA, that tiny kernel of something corrupt and ruthless and power-hungry, whispered that it was youthful bravado and cult conditioning, that she could break him. _Everyone_ could be broken somehow. All it took was the right fulcrum. But they hadn’t broken her--not fully--in three months of being held prisoner. They hadn’t broken Garcia--not fully--by murdering his family in front of him, or by throwing him in prison for six months. They hadn’t broken Jiya--not fully--by kidnapping her, stranding her, taking Rufus from her. They hadn’t broken Wyatt--not fully--by turning his resurrected wife into a sleeper agent. 

Breaking someone had to be done right, or all it did was strengthen their hatred and their rage and their resolve. She shook her head, forcing that voice out. Giving him a smack or two and making some idle threats was one thing, but seriously, what was she going to do, start cutting off body parts to show him she was serious? Ripping out fingernails? Jesus. No. She couldn’t. Maybe she wasn’t _good girl_ Lucy Preston anymore, but embracing the shades of grey in this fight didn’t mean she had to voluntarily turn herself into a monster. If she did, David Rittenhouse, and her mother’s plans, won by default.

She wouldn’t, couldn’t, ask Garcia to get rougher with him either. Maybe he would do it. He’d certainly been capable of doing what it took when it came to getting information from Rittenhouse agents in the past, though it seemed like he usually just coolly killed them and took what intel they had on them, but she knew he’d personally interrogated William Hale Thompson, the _mayor of Chicago_ in 1931, with zero fucks given. She guiltily recognized they’d all relied on him for that while he was sitting in prison, resting comfortably on their moral superiority that they’d gotten the intel they needed and kept their own hands clean. It felt like a particularly dirty bit of hypocrisy now. No, she wouldn’t ask that of him. He’d left that behind him, chosen another path and earning his own redemption by finally fighting alongside them, and she wouldn’t force him to abandon that only so that she wouldn’t have to stoop to do it herself. She wasn’t Emma. She didn’t have lackeys and tools. She had friends and teammates.

She looked at Matt and said coolly, “We’ll let you think about it a while, then.” She jerked her head towards the door, indicating Wyatt should follow her. Time to talk and regroup, because otherwise they’d sit there and stare at Matt and in doing so, let him know their threats didn’t have much in the way of teeth.

Stepping out of the shed and into the darkened backyard, closing the door behind them, she nodded to Wyatt to tell them to move away enough so Matt wouldn’t hear. Trying to eavesdrop on your captors wasn’t that hard if they got careless and talked right outside the door, and this was a wooden garden shed to boot as opposed to a solidly constructed room in a building. Under a linden tree in the opposite end of the backyard, she sighed. “You know more about this than me, but I’m not sure we’re going to get more from him.”

Wyatt gave a slight half-shrug. “Probably not. But it’s worth another try.” He looked at her, head tilted aside as if trying to catch a proper glimpse of her in the half-hearted moonlight filtering through the branches above. “You OK?”

The flash of irritation rippled through her at him once again assuming she couldn’t handle it. “Yeah, I’m good.”

She heard the creak of the wooden gate, turned, heard the sound behind her of Wyatt drawing his gun from its holster beneath his suit jacket. “Easy now, it’s just us,” Garcia said, though sounding almost amused.

“So?” Wyatt asked them.

Jiya and Garcia joined them underneath the shade of the tree, and she saw Jiya’s nod. “We talked with her, and Mileva Marić has it handled.” She said it with a calm, utter confidence that soothed some of Lucy’s jangled nerves. Good. It would be all right. They’d be able to get home, history wouldn’t be thrown completely off course. 

“How’s it going with him?” Garcia asked, gesturing towards the shed.

“He meant to take Einstein’s place. That’s about all we got,” Wyatt answered him, crossing his arms over his chest.

Garcia nodded. “Likely to get anything else?”

“We’ll see,” Wyatt answered him. Garcia’s gaze flicked to her, and she gave him a slight shake of her head. No, she’d seen the fanaticism up close. They wouldn’t get anything more from him. “He’s playing cocky little punk right now.”

Jiya snorted derisively at that. “Of course he is.”

“If you want to have a shot at him,” Lucy answered, “go for it.” She forced some optimism into her tone. “I think I pissed him off because he thinks I’m a traitor to the cause. Maybe you two will have better luck.” 

“Don’t want me to have a crack at him?” Garcia asked, his words too smooth and too even, and she wished the light was better so she could read his expression better.

“No, all of Rittenhouse knows about you from before, so he’ll be even more determined to resist you.” She could see that, now that she said it, but of course that wasn’t the whole story. She didn’t want to put that weight on him. Plus with that reputation, he’d either have to ready to become that fierce bloody-handed killer again with no limits, or else lose control of the interrogation entirely. He’d gone for cold intimidating violence, and so his hands were as tied as Matt’s right now. Wyatt and Jiya had the luxury of being lower-key.

“So nice to know I’ve left a lasting impression. Well, then it sounds like I’m sitting this one out.” He gave a neat flourish of his hands towards Wyatt and Jiya. “Good luck.” 

The moment the shed door shut behind them, the air of casual cheer dropped from him, and he turned back to her. She reached out, putting a hand on his arm, feeling the finely woven wool underneath her fingertips. She hadn’t truly noticed for a while how he held back with all of them, how touch-starved he must have been in all those years since his family had died. She’d only finally seen it in his hesitation to touch her, the awkwardness in every line of his body. She made it a point now to try to touch him when she could, without the point of feeling like it was a tease for something neither of them could start yet. 

He reached out, hesitating only slightly, and his hand covered hers for a moment, warm in the cool October night. “Lucy. What’s the problem?” 

As usual, he cut right to the heart of it, and he’d sensed she needed that touch as much as he did. She closed her eyes, hearing the warmth and soft concern in his voice, treasuring it. In that moment, some part of her wanted to take him down to the ground, that long, strong body overlying hers, pressing her down into the cool autumn grass. It wasn’t only the curiosity and burgeoning need that had been growing there for months now, and yes, she’d dreamed about him, fantasized about him, in increasingly frustrating and enticing detail. It was something balancing faintly on the edge of desperation, to feel like she wasn’t a wraith, something made insubstantial floating away on the faintest breeze. The same feeling that drove her to Wyatt in Hollywood that night, the need to let go and to feel _something_ , and she realized only now what the unease had been with Matt, what echoes it brought back. Working her hand from beneath his, she drew it back hastily. “I…”

The light wasn’t great, but she could sense as much as see the awkwardness entering his stance, the set of his shoulders, at her hasty retreat from him. “What’s the problem?” he repeated, voice still gentle.

Garcia would understand. He would understand, wouldn’t he? What it was like being in enemy hands, even if they hadn’t truly been his enemies, but they’d still held him, interrogated him, locked him away. “What...are we going to do with him?” she asked, leaning back against the tree trunk, feeling oddly like if she didn’t, she might sag to the ground herself. “We’ve never caught someone alive before.” Except him, but he’d never been Rittenhouse, so it wasn’t the same at all.

His voice went cooler, more remote, as he turned the problem over objectively. She had the feeling he tried to distance himself from it as much as she was right now. “You’re right. We’ve killed all the sleepers we’ve found out in the field while they’ve been trying to carry out the mission.”

“We can’t just drop him on the local police. We don’t have time to stick around for a trial, and can’t testify anyway because then we’re very much on record, too many questions raised of who we are and why we’re here. If he confesses, he could recant that the moment we leave, and there’s no evidence, so he walks. And I’m sure he will rather than be hanged.” 

“So, we...what, drag him back with us in the Lifeboat? Turn him over to the Feds?” 

She shook her head impatiently. “Can we risk letting him see where we are? I mean, he’ll be convicted of murder, but...” What was the statute on that? Would he get out someday?

“Lucy, that’s not a risk. If we take him back, he’s going to disappear down a government black hole and never see the light of day again.”

She felt the sudden stillness in the air. “Like you did. Or were supposed to, anyway.”

“Like I did.” His voice had gone suddenly too neutral.

“Denise said you’d have a trial--”

“Oh, I did. Every bit as much a show trial as the Soviets could have done. You think they were going to admit a top-level state secret like the time machine, even to a private military court? They kept going with the NSA cover up because it was _so very convenient_. So I was convicted of the murders of my own wife and daughter,” no hint of pain in his voice, only that relentless anger as cold and hard and sharp as iron, and she flinched to hear it. God, had Denise really been that cruel as to agree to deny him not only the chance to save them, but the chance to clear his name of killing them? “And then multiple acts of terrorism and murder in Chechnya, where I was supposedly hiding and captured. Twenty--three? Four? Numerous life sentences in federal prison, no possibility of parole.” He let out a mirthless grunt that tried and failed to be a cynical laugh. “Solitary confinement for my own safety too, because of course they couldn’t risk a federal asset gone rogue in GenPop. They told me I probably only avoided the needle because I came to my senses and helped them capture an even bigger threat. So yes. That’s what’s in store for our pet Rittenhouse agent. They’ll wallpaper over the truth enough to convict him of charges to keep him locked up for life so he’ll never be able to tell anyone about the Mothership, and they won’t have to either.”

Her stomach lurched at that, terror and rage and nausea and so many other feelings, dark and thick and choking, strangling her. “Then if he can’t be hanged here, maybe we should just kill him,” she said, voice barely above a whisper, feeling her fingernails dig into her palms from where she clenched her fists. “Kill him right here, right now. It feels more honest, at least.”

“Lucy, it’s one thing to...”

“What, Garcia?” She raised her head, sought his eyes with hers as best she could in the darkness. “What? We hand him over to rot in prison for forty, fifty years, and we call that _mercy_? Is that what you thought was mercy for you?” Her mother would have kept her prisoner forever rather than let Rittenhouse kill her, even if she’d finally have had to admit in the end that Lucy wouldn’t break and turn, if she’d failed in St. Mihiel in her plan to fool them all just long enough to deal them a crippling blow.

“What are you asking? If I’d known what was coming, would I have blown myself up in that basement along with all of Rittenhouse?” His voice went low and rough and angry, in a way she hadn’t heard from him since the World’s Fair. “What, are you blaming me for not ending this then and there? If I remember right, _you_ were the one who insisted on talking me out of it.”

Did he hate her for it, deep down? She laughed, hearing the crack in her voice as she did it. Now she was the one coming apart, looking into the abyss of those lost months, and she’d told herself and everyone she was _just fine_ so much that she’d almost started to believe it. But it had only waited for her, and now it felt like she’d been hit by a freight train, and she’d run into the wall of his anger besides rather than finding his understanding. “Maybe I was stupid to think there was another way, and look what it’s done. Look how many more people have died because I didn’t let you do it. I realized that because I had a long, long time to do nothing but think.” Been so ready to give her own life in St. Mihiel to get the job done, but also, yes, in atonement for the guilt that had eaten at her like a worm for months. She’d made it all possible. So she’d meant it when she told him in that prison cell she’d helped put him in that she’d changed. _You’re less fearful,_ he’d said in Salem, not knowing why, but seeing the change anyway. Nothing left to fear when there was nothing left to lose. “Maybe this is all my fault. For holding you back in DC. Even for some version of me giving you that damn journal in the first place, given you followed it so blindly.” What was she even saying?

“So very glad I’ve continued to be _just useful enough_ to justify my existence for now, given you’re telling me that I’m generally better off dead.”

She could have grabbed him by the lapels and shaken him. Or strangled him with that maroon paisley tie. How dare he assume that was what she meant? She didn’t want him here by default, she wanted him to want to be here, with her. It hadn’t hurt arguing with him before, given she had the confidence of knowing she was right in telling him that he was being an insane napalm bomb against history. But he mattered too much now, and hearing him make that kind of dismissively snarky remark cut deeply. “I’m sure your _perfect_ Lorena wouldn’t have messed it up.” It was a low blow, so low that she hated herself the moment she said it. But she threw it out there anyway, needing to scrape together any defense that she could. 

He flinched--barely, controlled as he was--but she knew him well enough to see it. But he recovered almost instantly, spine straight as an arrow, shoulders square. He sketched her a sweeping bow that would have been perfectly at home at the great courts of Europe in the past. “Your obedient servant, ma’am. Just tell me what to do. Because as ever, _Lucy Preston knows best_. You’ve been assuming the right to tell me what to do for the last two years--the last four if we count that other version of you--so why the hell would you stop now?”

She wanted to scream at him, but the door to the shed banged open, light from the lantern flooding out as Matt stumbled his way out on stiff legs, followed by Wyatt. “What are you--” Was Wyatt actually going to shoot him?

Then she saw his hands were unbound, though Wyatt had his pistol pressing into the small of Matt’s back. “He needs to pee,” Wyatt said, tone brooking no argument. “Look, I’m not gonna make someone, even a Rittenhouse assassin, sit there and piss themselves, OK?”

They’d given her a bathroom too in the warehouse where they’d first held her, a dusty one with lime green paint peeling from its walls and a flickering light that often didn’t work, so she’d had to keep the door open into the bedroom-slash-cell with its cot in order to see. She’d moved right from that to the “protective custody” of the bunker, which seemed like a sick joke now that she’d tasted more freedom again with Denise easing off. Nobody physically stood there and watched her on the toilet, or in the mildewed shower, but she was fairly sure they’d had cameras. Garcia nodded, stood aside as Wyatt escorted Matt towards the hedge, though she noticed he kept his eyes on Matt also, hand drifting to the butt of the gun beneath his jacket too in case their prisoner made a run for it. She half hoped he would, that he realized there was no way out.

He didn’t make a run for it. He did his business, and turned back around towards the shed. But Emma had apparently prepared her agent well for this, because just inside the door of the shed, he wheezed, bending over, vomiting and gasping, then dropped like a rag doll. “Fuck!” Wyatt swore, dropping down to his knees, ready to start CPR.

“Wyatt, don’t,” Garcia said, grabbing his shoulder. “You smell that?”

“I don’t smell anything.”

“Almonds,” Jiya replied, coming to the door of the shed too, leaning over Matt.

She leaned in enough too to catch a whiff of it, bitter and sweet all at once. “Cyanide,” she told them. “He must have had a pill in his pocket, and grabbed it while his hands were untied…” Popular in spy stories, but apparently Rittenhouse had bought into it also. This wasn’t even her mother’s Rittenhouse anymore, was it? Had she made a mistake by not pretending to seize that stupid supposed birthright, and using it to turn Rittenhouse inside out and destroy it from within? Or would it have corrupted her along the way?

No, Wyatt didn’t want to perform CPR given the lethal dose of cyanide remaining in Matt’s mouth. He was unconscious, not dead, but he’d be dead within a couple of minutes, tops. Absolutely nothing to be done for him. She stared at him, feeling curiously numb and exhausted. She felt the pity for his wasted life and stupid adherence to a creed not worth his time, let alone his death, but it mingled with the relief that at least he’d taken the decision out of their hands. 

Wyatt looked stunned, as if he’d failed at something and couldn’t bear it. Her eyes met Garcia’s, and she still saw the anger there, knew that argument wasn’t finished between them, but he was enough of a professional to put that aside for the moment. Fine. She could do it too. 

It was Jiya who finally broke the silence. “Nothing more we can do for him, or here,” she told them. “Let’s head back. See if we can make it home.” With one last look at Matt lying there on the grass, taking a couple of minutes to clean up the scene and wipe away the fingerprints, she couldn’t help but agree with Wyatt at feeling like they’d somehow failed, somewhere.

~~~~~~~~~~

She clenched the controls, white-knuckled, the whole way. Yes, the console had booted, but who knew if that meant anything. Dialing in to Gettysburg didn’t mean it would work if those satellites weren’t there to link up with the programming, because without that guidance, they could end up popping into the middle of the Pacific, or somewhere below the Earth’s crust. Make Jules Verne’s “Journey to the Center of the Earth” literal for about a second before they presumably vaporized in superheated magma. She’d read Verne constantly in Chinatown, some of the only sci-fi available at the time, so it was comfortably familiar. Her copies probably sat in her room long after she’d left, dogeared and with worn covers, because aside from Molly, nobody else probably would want them.

Nobody said anything on the way back. Watching a man, barely more than a kid, kill himself in front of them didn’t exactly lend itself to lighthearted conversation. But the reminder of mortality, of how fragile everything really was and how some things were deemed unsurvivable, hung like a black funeral pall. She’d felt that same atmosphere when some gambler, after losing everything, would off himself in one of the rooms upstairs, or behind the saloon. It had happened five times in three years, and every time, if nobody claimed the body, she’d spend some of her salary to at least get a decent pine coffin for burial out in Potters’ Field. Some of the rest of them shook her head and called her sentimental, that God knew suicide was a sin, but she’d lived in a place they couldn’t even imagine where mental health still wasn’t given nearly enough attention or credit, but the sympathy for being unable to go on was far greater. She’d thought about it herself some lonely nights after she first got there, knowing she’d never see Rufus again, that Rittenhouse might well win. But she’d decided she’d be strong enough to live, to make the most of her life, even if it was one she couldn’t have imagined. It was still hers, and Rittenhouse had tried to take it, and fuck them. In the end, she wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. 

They landed with a thump, and she hit the button to open the door, holding her breath. The swampy Gettysburg air hit like a brick wall, and peering out, she could see Denise and Connor waiting by the console. She sighed, both in relief and resignation. “Looks like Mileva Marić did it.” She gave Garcia a congratulatory pat on the shoulder for that as she passed, and he smiled, but she could see how distracted he was, and that his heart wasn’t really in it.

Connor pushed the stairs up for them, and descending them, trying to not snag the woolen hem of her skirt on that one corner that really needed to be filed down, she had to ask him, “So, uh, who came up with the theory of relativity?” She popped the first two buttons of her shirtwaist, needing it in the humid night air.

“It was a team effort, Jiya, you know that.” She gave Connor a look. “ _Oh_. Well, then. As I said, a team effort, but primary credit given to one M. Grossmann, who was revealed in the ‘20’s when she and her husband Marcel emigrated to America, to be Mileva Grossmann, nee Marić. Everyone of course hurried to assume it was Marcel Grossmann, and that it was a printing typo of there being _two_ M. Grossmanns listed on those papers. It wasn’t.” 

Now she couldn’t help but smile. Using first initials on papers was standard practice in science, but Marić had exploited that with admirable cunning. She’d known full well that groundbreaking work like that wouldn’t get respect if attached to a woman’s name, so she’d gamed the system. “Was there a man named Albert Einstein involved at all?”

“He was listed as a collaborator, yes. Apparently murdered by anti-Semitic extremists while he, Mileva, and Marcel were students, but his ideas contributed to the papers. They also established a scholarship for Jewish students of sciences at Columbia in honor of him.”

 _She did better by him than he would have by her._ Somehow she wasn’t surprised, but given how the mission had ended, it felt good to hear something positive like that. “Were they happy together?”

“They’re the only couple aside from the Curies to win a joint Nobel Prize,” Connor told her. “And by all accounts, yes, a very happy marriage. He was one of the few who’d been good to her in the days even before Einstein’s death, and well, apparently that brought them closer.”

The smile on her face now felt genuine, warmth inside her spreading away much of the chill of the end of the mission. “Good. I’m glad.” Marić had been so afraid she’d be nothing, that she’d never be loved again, but she’d found her courage and her resilience. Obviously it had paid off. Between that and Kate Warne’s surviving to 1908 rather than dying young in the 1860’s, and blazing a trail for women in the Pinkertons and later all law enforcement by sticking around for decades rather than being a brilliant but brief candle, it felt damn good to have changed history for the better in a few ways. The world wasn’t perfect by any means, but at least a few doors had been left slightly more ajar, and some women had been allowed to better make their mark. 

Though she’d been entertained as anything to read about the supposed multiracial polyamorous trio who’d helped Kate Warne and Allan Pinkerton save Abraham Lincoln. Only in modern scholarship, of course--before that they’d assumed that Gerald and Lucinda were a thing, and Gerald and Juliette were _maybe_ a thing, but lesbians _and_ polyamory had to be buried, especially when it came to anti-assassination heroics. But there was apparently a Flynn-De Marigny Park in New Orleans now, their supposed home. Maybe they needed to go see it when they moved to the safehouse down in Louisiana.

Glancing at the clock, they’d gotten back at ten o’clock, so too late to put in the effort to cook anything. Changing out of her 1900s clothing, she headed downstairs, where Connor had saved the day, already heated up plates of the leftover Indian he and Denise had apparently ordered while they were gone, saving the rest for them when they got back. The air in the kitchen hung thick with the smell of curry and spices, and she breathed it in, enjoying it, even as Wyatt discreetly opened a window. “The biryani’s sadly not as good as my mom’s,” Denise said, grabbing an ice cream sandwich for herself, “but it’s not half bad.” She leaned in and gave them a conspiratorial smile. “But the rogan josh might actually be better, I’ll give them that. Don’t ever tell her I said that.”

She watched Denise head upstairs, knowing it was time for her nightly call with Michelle and the kids. Shoveling down her food, wanting to savor it but honestly too hungry to hold back, she put the plate in the dishwasher and headed back out to the barn. They’d missed regular work time today so she was eager to make up for it, plus she wasn’t tired enough yet. A mission always left her a bit keyed up and unable to sleep. Not to mention she really wanted to get the chrono-nav back in place as quickly as possible so they weren’t at that disadvantage in case Emma got another urge to go mess up history in the next few days.

Connor had been busy, since she saw most of the rest of the chrono-nav pieces neatly assembled on the workbench leftover from the jury-rigged job that had gotten them to Zürich and back. Pulling her hair back into a loose ponytail, and turning on her grunge playlist from Spotify, she got to work. Garcia and Connor joined her shortly after, obviously in no mood to sleep yet either, and they fell into the rhythm of working together. She’d admit that watching their huge teammate contort himself into spaces to do the work never failed to be hilarious, and having Connor there, with his calm certainty and knowledge about all the work, helped immensely.

Connor finally dropped out around midnight, mumbling that if he kept at it, he was liable to mess something up. But there was a spark of excitement in his eyes nonetheless. “We’ve made such progress with the schedule we’ve kept.” All of their eyes turned to the Lifeboat instinctively, shiny and new rather than the tired rustbucket that had come back from Chinatown held together with a prayer and chewing gum. It still wasn’t sleek and impressive like the Mothership, no, but it looked damn good to her. “Another week, I think,” he said, hand on her arm as he passed, practically beaming, “and we’ll be ready to start installing the Lifeline.”

She returned his smile, not having to try too hard. But there was that kernel of doubt inside her now that she couldn’t dislodge, like swallowing a cherry pit that stuck in her throat. They’d all fought so hard to get here, but had any of them thought like she had lately about how everything had changed? It wasn’t only Garcia who’d had his life turned upside down by Emma’s meddling.

Neither of them talked that much initially. He wasn’t the chattiest while busy with work anyway, breezy sarcasm falling away, but the sheer silence felt too unusual, and given how they’d worked together on this one, she felt strangely able to ask him about it. As he put down a crescent wrench and reached for the screwdriver, she said hesitantly, “So, I’m guessing it’s you and Lucy that’s got you in a funk?” It probably would also be the Rittenhouse agent’s suicide, but she’d seen the sudden awkwardness between the two of them on the way back to the Lifeboat. It made her realize all over again how close Lucy and Garcia had gotten to each other without any big fuss or public demonstration. It seemed now like they’d always been like that, turning to each other, a team, a partnership, and teetering on being far more than that. 

They’d been like two stars pulled into a mutual orbit, turning and turning through space but traveling the same slow path. But something in that gravitational field, so to speak, had been thrown out of whack. She suspected what it might be. Orbits worked so long as the distance stayed where it should be. A wobble here or there, and the gravity changed. It threw the whole thing off, and maybe it recovered, or else if that wobble was bad enough, they crashed together or they forever drifted apart. “Did you tell her you love her?” 

He froze like a deer in the headlights. “How…” She might have laughed except he was already skittish enough. He wet his lips, carefully putting down the screwdriver with a tiny _plink_ against the metal floor of the Lifeboat.

“You didn’t.” She shook her head, settling herself in, back against the nav console, shifting aside a few inches to avoid a bolt head digging into the small of her back--someone hadn’t gotten it quite flush, or maybe it had shaken loose on the journey. She drew her knees up in front of her. “So maybe that’s the problem.”

“Did you, uh,” he waved a hand in a strange almost-flail, “have some vision or something?”

She held back a sigh along with the laugh. “Seriously, Garcia, it’s a one way ticket. I don’t see the future.” 

Should have figured even stunned, he was a sharp one, because his brows furrowed, and those dark green eyes of his turned intense, thoughtful. “Except you _have_ , when our future is in the past,” he retorted.

“I haven’t seen anything with you and Lucy in the past that tells me anything certain about you two, OK?” She raised her right hand. “Swear to Allah. I honestly try to not see stuff unless I’m trancing deliberately. I’ve got control over it now, like I didn’t before I...left. When it would just take me over.” The only thing she’d gotten was a brief glimpse of them, shortly after she’d gotten to Chinatown and she’d been trying so hard to see anything related to Rufus and the rest, to make sense of the situation, to give herself some hope. Winter among the barren skeletal trees, probably 18th century, and Garcia laughing in a way she hadn’t seen in him even now, full unabashed delight--which had been _super weird_ to see then given she’d only known him as a grimly efficient murderbot at that point--and helping an equally laughing Lucy brush snow off her cloak. It looked friendly, though not necessarily intimate. It could mean anything, or nothing at all. “Duh. I’m a scientist. I observe.” 

Another smile, though this one was filled with reluctant self-deprecating humor. “I never could put one over on my mom either.” He sat down from where he’d been kneeling, obviously settling in to talk. “No, I didn’t tell her.” He hesitated, but then added, voice suddenly going very small and quiet, “She knows, though.”

“She kinda needs to hear it, though. Especially after what happened with Wyatt.” She’d tried so hard to not rub the happiness she had with Rufus in Lucy’s face, knowing how hurt she’d been, and kind of wanting to slap Wyatt for how oblivious he was to the pain he caused her. Maybe Wyatt was getting better now, but he hadn’t exactly made himself look good in the first half of 2018. “That it’s not going to be like that again.”

He gave a curt little half-nod. “I know.”

“So what is it? You’re...what, afraid that you’re betraying your wife and daughter by thinking about being happy about someone else?” From the stricken look on his face, she’d hit the bullseye. Now she did let out a heavy sigh. “You know how much I thought about Rufus while I was in the 1880s, knowing I’d never see him again?” He didn’t answer, but she sensed it was because he knew it was a rhetorical question. She lifted her head. “Three years. And I’d given up on seeing him again. He wasn’t dead, then, but he might as well have been. I’d told people that I’d lost a fiance, so they’d back off and respect it. But...you get so lonely. Missing someone. Missing being held. Missing someone looking at you like you’re the best thing they’ve ever seen. Missing mattering so much to them. I was...there was nobody else yet, but when you all showed up, I was almost ready to move on.” She hadn’t confessed this to anyone, but if anyone would understand, it would be him. The words burst forth before she could help them, dredged up as if from the bottom of a well, a dark and slimy and seemingly endless place. “And sometimes I feel like he died because I didn’t wait for him.”

“No,” he shook his head, sounding almost angry. “No, no. You think I didn’t ask myself if they died because I was too good at my job and turned up a lead exactly where I was asked, and I followed the protocol chain in reporting it? Rufus, Lorena, Iris--they died because Rittenhouse will stop at nothing to protect themselves. That’s all. You aren’t to blame, Jiya. You expected to never see him again, you even told him to stay away, and you damn well shouldn’t be expected to live the rest of your life alone after everything you’d been through.”

It felt like balm to those deeply buried wounds to hear that. “But you should?” He grimaced, glanced away. She had him there, and compared to Wyatt who wouldn’t take responsibility, she was getting a little annoyed with Garcia’s determination to consider himself more or less eternally damned, and refusing to step up to possibilities. 

“I’ve done things--”

“We all have. Try again. Like I said, is it that you feel like you’re betraying them? Lorena’s alive. She’s safe. She’s happy. You said you saw it. Even if she wasn’t around, did you love a woman who’d resent you being happy? Seriously? I wouldn’t have been pissed believing Rufus found somebody else.” She tried to think how best to frame these words. “People in the 19th century were actually a lot smarter about dying and grief than we are. Death? We’re all so scared of it. We keep away from it at all costs. All that fear and insecurity about aging, how we go off to die in hospitals tucked away from everyone, how we hand everything about funerals off to this--this massive industry. Back then? If you got old, it was something to be celebrated. You died at home with your loved ones there. People washed the bodies themselves, built the coffins, held the wake at home. Islam’s a lot closer to that than Western culture, but I was trying so hard to be American when my dad died, and I didn’t appreciate it then.” It was harder then, struggling with grief and hard questions as she was already.

“You learned in Chinatown, though.”

“I helped my friend Norma wash and clothe her daughter Louisa for her funeral. Six years old. Died of diphtheria. She was the sweetest little girl.” She’d loved stories, and had she grown up, little Louisa probably would have had tales to tell her own children, stories that wouldn’t even exist until they came to a movie or TV screen in a hundred years. Remembering Norma by lantern light, eyes red from weeping, cutting a lock of fine strawberry blond hair to put in a locket, to keep a piece of her Louisa forever. “A year later, Norma and her husband George had another child. Another daughter. They named her Louisa too. I know people today would think that’s weird, because American culture is all about how everyone has to be so individual we’re almost paranoid about it. But it wasn’t...wasn’t about _replacing_ Louisa, making her memory into this bad copy. It was about love. Honoring that love and keeping it alive in the world rather than burying it in the ground. Saying ‘I love you so much that I chose you, I chose hope, I chose to keep going. I have my own love for you, but also all my love that I never got to give to this one that’s left us.’ People died all the time, people lost siblings, parents, spouses, children, grandparents, _everyone_ saw someone dying or dead. Death was just another part of life to everyone. They grieved, but it didn’t define their life.” People like Queen Victoria had been the exceptions, though she suspected with Victoria that while her grief had been real, it was also easier to just swear off marrying again to avoid the massive headache of finding another appropriate political marriage. 

He listened. She appreciated that about him, unlike Wyatt. His expression turned a little sad, wistful even as he looked at her, eyes strangely soft and compassionate. “You grew up a lot in three years, didn’t you?”

“I had to.” Sometimes she felt a lot older than her thirty years, and not only because people often lived and aged and died faster back in the 19th century. It was a rougher, harder life, and she’d had to change and grow, or die. “So?”

“You’re right. But if you didn’t have a chance to get Rufus back, you’d take your time too.” He shrugged, fingers interlaced and clasped over one jeans-clad knee. She noticed he still wore his wedding ring. “Yes, it’s been almost four years. But--it’s funny, given we’ve got a damn time machine. There’s never been _time_ to devote to it. My life hasn’t really been my own since the day they broke into my home and murdered them. Two years of living in hiding and waiting and planning, and since then, it’s revolved around the mission, the war. Four years of my life being about Rittenhouse.” He looked at her, gaze bold and direct. “I know what it takes to carve out enough space from fighting a war to have enough to give someone. She’s worth more than rushing it.”

She was glad to hear that. Though he kept looking at her, intent and curious. “Quid pro quo, then,” he continued, “what’s bothering you?”

She took the leap of faith that he wouldn’t judge. “I won’t get Rufus back.”

“Well, if you’re that pessimistic about it--”

“No, I mean, I...it’s like Jessica. Wyatt got _a_ Jessica back. But not his Jessica. I mean, I’m not worried that we’re gonna rescue Rufus, and he’ll turn out to be a Rittenhouse mole, OK? But...I’m realizing that Emma changed more than your life. The Rufus we can rescue, he was with a version of me who got kidnapped and ended up in 1885, and he died there in 1888, and she got erased on the way to 1733. There’s so much that’s the same. But he’s not the same man. Not entirely. He’ll have...memories of us, of other things, that I don’t. He’s Rufus, and he’s almost the same. But he’s not _my_ Rufus. And the Jiya he loved is gone too.” She shook her head, looking down at her hands. “How do I… _we_ go to Chinatown and tell him that we’re there to make sure he doesn’t die, and his timeline’s actually safe and intact, but that you, Lucy, Wyatt and I cease to exist a month later thanks to Emma, and get replaced with slightly skewed versions--I mean, sorry, but you and me especially--of the people he knew? I mean, that’s verging on some horror movie plotline there.”

Was that Jiya alive in 1733 still, or had they been caught and destroyed in the timestream mid-jump when different versions of themselves were already there on the Zenger mission, if that 1733 was the same 1733? Or had they been shunted to the 1733 of another timeline entirely, and then jumped back to a different 2018, since their original places were now filled? It boggled her mind, but after seeing that future version of Wyatt and Lucy step out of the Lifeboat, she’d had to acknowledge that the butterfly effect was real, that infinite versions of themselves might have or might exist. Those two presumably got erased also by their past selves being able to go and save Rufus now, and yet, they’d willingly accepted that fate. Was that how it went? Versions of themselves were constantly being created or destroyed? It was one thing when it was meddling in other peoples’ history, but to have it be so clearly driven home felt like opening Pandora’s box. 

She’d dealt with it some with Rufus when he went on missions, and came back talking about versions of history--Salem and JFK and all of it--that she didn’t know. They’d had to deal with ever-so-slightly altered versions of each other from the ones they remembered. But that had all been about _history_. Easy to not care whether they remembered the Alamo letter being by one specific guy or an anonymous writer, but this was bigger, because it was personal.

His voice was soft when he answered. “He’ll be happy to stay alive, you know. The rest? It’ll work itself out.”

“I know,” she said, barely able to manage more than a choked whisper. “I know, I know, I’m incredibly lucky that there’s a good chance I can see him alive again. Be with him again. But...my Rufus is _gone_. He’s gone forever, and I have to be able to let him go. And be able to be patient with this Rufus in case he needs time.” She’d have been waiting for him almost four years by then, and it felt unbearable, but she’d have to do it. “And I’m only now really, really realizing everything that means.” She angrily dashed a hand across her eyes, wiping the tears gathering there. “I think of any of us, you’d get it? Lorena’s alive, and you’re grateful for that, but your Lorena’s gone. And your daughter with her.”

He couldn’t quite hide the flinch of pain from her, and didn’t reply for a few eternally long seconds. “Ah...are we OK to do a hug?” he asked, tone a bit awkward. “I think you need it.”

“Yeah.” She recognized it was more than that, it was admitting she’d accepted him as a friend fully, but it seemed only fitting. He’d proved himself by this point, both in the field and out.

He made a face. “Can we get out of this damn thing first?” She managed a watery laugh, glad for the joke, and pushed up off the floor of the Lifeboat, heading for the hatch.

The man might be an idiot about some things, but she’d give him that he gave a pretty good hug, big and solid as he was. He let her go, though one hand lingered at her shoulder, as is keeping that connection alive and reinforcing what he was about to say. “Hey. You two found each other both in our timeline and this one. Probably in others too. You were meant to be together. And this thing changed all of us. We’re not the same as when we started this, hm? But you two were still together. So I have to believe you and Rufus, you’ll find a way.”

“Thanks.” She managed a wry smile, fighting her way for her own dry humor to keep the sorrow at bay. “Good pep talk for both of us, yeah?”

He gave a reluctant chuckle, heading for the barn door. “Yeah, I’ll take it. Now go get some sleep.”


	16. 3x04: One Stone (Garcia: Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, August 2018)

It was well after midnight, and he’d changed into his pajama pants and a tank top given how the air conditioning barely worked on the second floor. But he’d opted to keep packing, albeit quietly. It wasn’t as though he’d accumulated much in his months in the bunker, and now this farmhouse. Some books, a few changes of clothing, some historical wardrobe and accessories. He’d known the moment Denise moved them from the bunker in such a rush that this would be their lives until it was over, one way or another. It didn’t bother him. He’d been a man on the run for so long that living lean and traveling light, and not settling in too deeply anywhere, had become instinctive.

But still--he would miss this farmhouse. He’d always liked the Mid-Atlantic when they’d wandered out from Baltimore, the rolling green ridges and sun-dappled forests, the farms and the livestock. It had its own unusual charms, even to the point where when they went east towards York and then Lancaster, they might find Amish buggies or carriages sharing the road with SUVs. It had been quiet, which California wasn’t by any means, and given Split was one of Croatia’s biggest cities and had _maybe_ just hit 200,000 people before the war sent the population spiraling down due to refugees fleeing the fighting, he’d always hated the fast pace of huge cities. Besides, this was far enough away from Baltimore to give him the needed distance. He’d run from there to São Paulo, and from there, never stopped running, never coming within probably three hundred miles of Baltimore until he’d stolen the Mothership, went to DC. It was like that broke the spell, and gave him the courage to at least visit their graves. Seeing Lorena alive too, much as it was still a barbed kind of mercy, knowing she’d be happy here in Baltimore, helped too. It was no longer a city of too much pain and too many ghosts.

He should be thorough in checking the place, though. Cognizant of Wyatt sleeping in the next room, he began quietly checking the places he might have left things, if he’d done the hiding. Though he had done the hiding, hadn’t he? Or at least a version of him that was identical in most of the major ways, and somehow he doubted being a married man and a father would have affected the knowledge of how to hide things. If nothing else it meant Iris probably would never have accidentally found her presents before they were wrapped, and he couldn’t help but smile at that thought, bitter and sweet mingled. He’d have to check the barn and surrounding areas tomorrow, but if he’d hidden anything from the others, from the habit of years, he would put in more effort than a teenage girl stuffing her diary under the mattress. 

Jackpot. The base of the cheap IKEA nightstand had a compartment in it below the lower shelf. He smiled briefly at a photo of himself and Lucy, a formal portrait all sepia-tinted and with the two of them dressed in either late Victorian or maybe Edwardian attire--from the Cyrillic, it was a studio in Vladivostok, 1904. The Yamamoto mission, then. It looked like they’d been a good team much sooner then. More photos--himself and Rufus, Wyatt and Jiya. They’d obviously taken a little time from the mission to have some fun, half-strangers as they’d likely been back then. 

Though when he shuffled through the papers under the photo, letters and notes of some sort that he’d read later, his heart almost seized. The black leather cover with the initials “LP” tooled in gold: he’d known that book like the back of his hand, and he’d said it had been erased in Emma’s gambit, assumed it, but here the damn thing was.

He picked it up, hardly able to believe it was real, but the weight of it in his hands told him it was no figment of his imagination. But it was different too. The leather cover was far more weathered, cracked and worn, the original black leather binding strings apparently worn through to stubs and replaced with dark red ones at some point in its history. Glancing at the edges, he could see some of the pages had the ripples of water staining, and one spot looked like it might be blood. _How long did he-- **I** \--have this?_ Much longer than the two and a half years he’d kept it, and from the look of it, this Garcia Flynn kept it with him as a talisman every bit as much as he had through however many years.

Flipping through the pages quickly, he shook his head, seeing the familiar handwriting too, part of him wanting to sit down and read the thing and know what had changed, but unable to let it all sink in. He’d shied away from thinking about it too much because if he could have ended up here as an ordinary federal agent, fighting Rittenhouse anyway, with a clean record and without all the sins on his soul, gotten there without some version of Lucy handing him the damn journal and starting the whole thing for him, that made him loathe himself even more. Didn’t that mean it only happened that way because he was a far worse version of himself than this one who’d gone to 1733 and never returned, that everything he’d done and been through had been absolutely pointless? 

But here was the journal, inexorable, undeniable. Proof of fate, resting in his hands. Lucy had come to him here too, at some point in the past, told him to be ready and waiting, handed him his future. So when Denise Christopher came calling in 2016 for a very specific and secret mission, she’d found a very ready and eager Agent Flynn, hadn’t she? Now it all made too much sense, and he wouldn’t lie and say he didn’t feel relieved.

He looked at the journal, looked again at the picture of himself and Lucy, _quite the team_ far earlier than they’d been in his memory. Posed like a Victorian married couple, him standing behind her seated in a chair, his hand on the chair back. God knew, maybe they’d been playing fake-married even back then. Denise and Connor hadn’t said much about the ones who hadn’t come back, but Connor had slipped and intimated that everyone wondered why he and Lucy hadn’t gotten together. Clearly the pull had been there, and people had noticed.

Probably because without Lorena, in 2016 he’d have been forty-one, his only significant relationship had ended a decade and a half earlier--unless there was someone else he didn’t know about--and he’d been even more of an awkward idiot for it. He suspected he simply hadn’t had the courage and confidence in himself. He hadn’t with Lorena when he was thirty. She’d pretty much done all the heavy lifting there.

Lucy had torn a strip off him in Zürich, and he’d given it right back. It wasn’t the Lucy he was used to seeing, advocating angrily that the Rittenhouse kid was better off dead than imprisoned, and yes, it had hit him in still-soft scars. She didn’t know what federal prison was like to judge, did she? If she’d thought like that a little over a year ago, she not only wouldn’t have intended to let him go try to save his family, she’d have shot him dead as coolly as Wyatt had tried-- _failed constantly, though_ , he couldn’t help but think a bit smugly, even now. Did she really believe that now, Lucy Preston who’d been advocating for Jessica’s life earlier that summer? Had she changed so much? 

He didn’t know, couldn’t say for sure what nerves had been touched and why, but he didn’t want to leave it like that. Not with the frayed ends it left in the bond between them, and not with her so obviously upset and acting so unusually.

One thing he’d learned as a married man was recognizing an argument wasn’t the end of things, that so long as it didn’t linger and fester, it was only a small bump in the road. How many times had he and Lorena argued in nine years, over things from stupidly trivial to massive? Lorena’s temper had always burned fierce and long, and when it came to arguments, she had a proud and stubborn streak a mile wide. He’d learned it went a long way to swallow his own pride and be the one to go to her, and start trying to break up the hard ground to get to the roots of the fight.

They’d had to figure out what was behind the blow-up. The paint thing at the house in Split, it hadn’t been about green or blue or eggshell. It had been what they each needed for it to be home: him wanting to keep some things familiar versus Lorena having some right to change things to suit her. They’d gotten through it, and by the time they redid the place in Baltimore at Christmas that year, they’d handled that one effortlessly. This was--well, it wasn’t as trivial as paint. But he had to believe, hope, pray that they could get to the bottom of it.

He’d seen Lucy’s light on underneath her door when he’d gone to brush his teeth. Cracking his door, glad he’d used some WD-40 on the ancient hinges that now worked silently, he glanced down the hall. The light was still on, so she was still up. Apparently she was as sleepless as he was tonight. He wondered if it was for her as it was for him: too bothered by the fight to let go and fall asleep.

He debated heading down to the kitchen to grab a bottle of whatever was on hand, but decided not to do it. They were well past needing alcohol as a verbal lubricant, weren’t they? He grabbed the journal. He’d tried to give it back to her once, and much as he’d kept it here, it wasn’t that he didn’t want it so much as he felt he didn’t need it. He wasn’t a man working solo, desperately fighting against the tide and hoping she’d see the truth and join him. They were together now. He’d come to know her far beyond those pages--though not well enough to understand what place that argument had come from. Lucky talisman and guidebook as it had been when he’d so obviously needed it, he didn’t need the journal anymore. She deserved to have it back.

The fact his other self had hidden it rather than giving it made him suspect he’d never been able to have that conversation with Lucy about the journal, that he’d been loathe to inflict that wrinkle on things. He’d had it easier than trying to reveal that to a teammate and partner, coming to her as half-adversary, half-pleading ally, showing her the journal immediately. The fact she’d finally had the guts to ask about it back in the bunker meant she’d accepted it, but given it had taken her well over a year to get to that point, he couldn’t blame his other self for being so hesitant. He’d left it so long it probably felt impossible to tell her without risking freaking her out and losing her entirely. _Poor bastard,_ unable to help but pity him for that. Did this journal even have anything about Lucy herself? Did it matter?

Journal in hand, he slipped down the hallway to her room and softly knocked. She answered, hair done up into a loose braid that hung over her right shoulder, dressed in a far too large grey t-shirt and sleep shorts printed with rainbow penguins. “Can we talk?” he asked, keeping his voice low, gesturing towards the stairs. The bunker had been annoying in many ways, but at least his room was tucked away enough that they could sit in it and talk without worrying about sound carrying too much. It also had the advantage that he couldn’t hear Wyatt and Jessica’s almost ridiculously over-the-top sex grunts and moans unless he was headed for the bathroom. Unfortunately the terrorist allowed into the bunker only on sufferance couldn’t exactly pound on their door, and demand they keep it down.

She nodded once, a neat professorial nod like curtly acknowledging a student while simultaneously asserting authority. He felt like he should go sit at a desk and wait for a rap on his knuckles with a ruler. No, unlike Lorena, Lucy didn’t burn hot. Like him, she went cold as a winter sea. 

But she led the way downstairs nonetheless. Switching on a single lamp in the living room, she sat on one of the battered brown pleather recliners, tucking her feet beneath her. He took a seat on the near end of the couch to her, close enough to touch if he stretched out an arm over the end table, but he wasn’t going to be presumptive or stupid enough to try it. They could talk here so long as they kept their voices reasonably low. He hoped like hell they both could, but given they hadn’t actually shouted in that yard in Zürich, well aware Jiya and Lucy and the Rittenhouse agent could hear if they did, they probably could. “Here,” he said, holding out the journal. “It seems I was wrong to assume it vanished when we got thrown into this timeline. It was...apparently I had it here too. I just found it now.”

He likely shouldn’t have led off with that, given that was the least of the conversation they needed to have. But otherwise she’d see it there in his hand and wonder, so best to just get it over with, wasn’t it? She reached out and took it, studying it, turning it over in her hands as he had, seeing all the signs of long-term wear. “You’ve--that other you--had it for a while.”

“A long time, I’d say.”

“So I gave it to you here too. Or some version of me did, anyway.”

“I’m going to assume it was you, yes.”

She looked down at it, toyed with the ties, but didn’t flip it open. “Did you read it?”

“No.” Moved to honesty, he admitted, “I didn’t need to. Not anymore.” _I don’t need it, but I do need you, Lucy._

“I suppose we’ve changed enough things in this timeline,” she agreed, tone almost absent minded. That hurt almost more than anything, seeing that she cared so little in that moment, or had so little to give, that most of her was somewhere far away mentally.

“Lucy…”

Now her gaze focused, sharpened, pinning him like a hawk’s intense stare. Maybe she hadn’t been miles away, so much as formulating what she planned to say. “You don’t know what happened in this timeline, but you can tell me about what happened in São Paulo. _Everything_ , Garcia. I don’t believe you told me everything before. And now you know I believe you about being able to travel along your own lifeline.”

He shook his head, not to deny her, but simply trying to figure out how to say it. “I’ll tell you.” She seemed finally ready to hear it, whereas she’d been skittish before, even when she asked him, denying the fact that it could have happened. “But honestly, it’s easier if you ask questions.”

“Did we have sex?”

Definitely a good thing he hadn’t gone for the liquor, because right then and there he would have choked on it. Flippant sarcasm rose to his lips so readily as an instinctive defense. “ _O moj Bôze_ , you really _are_ going right for the jugular, aren’t you?”

But she gave him no mercy, continuing to stare him down. “Garcia. Answer the question.”

The anger surged within him and he shot back, “I’d seen my wife murdered only two weeks before, what the hell do you think? That Lorena mattered so little to me that yes, a one night grief fuck with a woman I’d just met was _exactly_ what I needed?” 

“Well, apparently I filled the ‘one night grief fuck’ role for Wyatt,” and she was practically screaming in a whisper, “so why not you too?” 

Hearing that, it felt like something broke within him, leaving him aching and sliced to ribbons, hurting now for her too. “Ah, Lucy.” He pushed up from the couch instinctively, wanting to do nothing more than grab her and hold her tight, but not sure it wouldn’t be too much, so he forced himself to sit back down. “Lucy...do you really think that little of yourself? That the only thing you had of value to convince me of this whole insane time travel scheme was to have sex with me?” She stared down at her hands, not looking at him. That told him enough. “Then God damn your mother for cutting you down at every turn just hoping you’d become this pliable little doll who’d do absolutely anything for Mommy’s approval. And God damn Wyatt too for treating you like his personal concubine.” 

Her brows furrowed furiously for a moment. “Isn’t ‘personal concubine’ sort of redundant?”

He stared at her and tried to not laugh, but couldn’t help it, because if she could be ridiculously pedantic, that was a bright light of normalcy. “As you say, Professor. Blame it on English being my second language.” Somehow it cut some of the tension in the air, and the anger ebbed away, leaving mostly the aching sympathy for her. “Do you really think that?” he asked again.

“I don’t know,” she murmured. “But I had to wonder. You were always so...intense with me. I had to wonder exactly what I’d said, or more likely done, to inspire that kind of...” She waved a hand in the air, “...dedication, I guess?”

“To answer your question: no. We didn’t have sex, didn’t kiss, we honestly just talked." Given Wyatt’s fixation, the irony didn’t escape him of assumptions made about what he and Lucy had or hadn’t been doing because of course _just talking_ couldn’t be enough. “But even if you’d tried, I wouldn’t have been interested.” He held up a hand to forestall her making assumptions. “Not because of you not being...enough. Hasn’t that been enough for us here to be something that matters? You didn’t talk me into or out of things by sleeping with me before.”

“That’s true.” 

“I mean, yes, beautiful, mysterious woman, arriving at an emotionally charged moment and talking about hope--sure, that’d do it for some people.”

“But not you.” 

Awkward as it felt, he decided it was best to be frank. It couldn’t be more awkward than having this conversation with Lorena, and admitting his entire sex life consisted of about a dozen times with one man over about four years. “I was grieving Lorena. And I’ve slept with only two people in my life: Danil, and then Lorena.”

“I’ve slept with...well, more than two.”

“Doesn’t bother me. I didn’t bring it up to compare.” She was almost thirty-six, and had never married. He would have thought it more unusual if she hadn’t had more than two lovers. “More to the point: until I feel something for someone, I’m not interested in them. I could sleep with them, yes, but if you’re not attracted to someone, takes a lot of the fun out of it.”

“So you’re demisexual.”

He gave an awkward shrug. “If that’s what they call it, sure.” He’d known he was different like that even as a teenager at war, when other men looked at pretty women and made comments and he felt nothing. He’d been attracted to a couple of other people who he’d shared enough of the fight with for the emotional intensity to be there on his side so he could see them in that light, but he’d said nothing, knowing they didn’t return the feeling, so nothing had come of it. 

“Are you attracted to me?” Merciless Lucy was certainly an interesting experience, especially now that he couldn’t turn the pressure down on it by telling himself she was well-intentioned but utterly mistaken because she was unknowingly working for Rittenhouse. “I mean,” and he sw how she swallowed hard, ducked her chin for a moment, “you did just say you thought I was beautiful.”

“Now? Yes. And you are.” No point holding back, not knowing if it was an unwanted comment. He could feel the heat rising in his cheeks, hoping the light was dim enough she wouldn’t notice. “Are you?” he couldn’t help but challenge her back, since it shouldn’t be a one-way interrogation here.

“Yes.” Well, that certainly did something to his heart, and rather further south also, but he forced himself to focus as she kept pressing the attack. “When did that happen?”

He sighed, feeling oddly like a lobster thrown into a pot with the water gently starting to bubble, but compelled to keep swimming anyway. “After the mission where we saved Robert Johnson. Where you called me out on not knowing you, and we actually talked.”

“Me too.” She gave a shy, almost nervous grin. “Yes, I’d noticed you’re attractive, hard to ignore, but that was the point it switched over from being this kind of...guilty awareness of it, I guess?” Not really wanting to notice, but being unable to do otherwise--he might not experience it like that, but he’d heard enough from other people to know how it worked. 

“Before that, you were right, but I didn’t really know you. Not as a person. You were...an ideal.”

“And that happened in São Paulo.”

How did you explain to someone how they saved your life when everything was darkness? “What I told you before was true. I was in a bar. Considering very seriously about eating my gun because what could one man on Interpol’s Most Wanted do against a secret society powerful enough to have senior American federal agents firmly in their grasp? I was drinking enough, I think, to just go numb enough to do it. You found me there. Said my name, told me you knew about Rittenhouse, told me a few things I wouldn’t have told someone I didn’t know. Asked me to take a walk with you, and warned me about a Rittenhouse agent in the alley. I figured if you were dragging me out there to shoot me yourself, it’d save me the trouble anyway, though I wasn’t drunk enough because I still ended up reaching for my gun. It was you--her--you? You shot him.”

She listened, like a child giving rapt attention to a bedtime story. “Then you took me to the cathedral there. Far better than a bar for talking about something as big as faith, especially since I had very little faith in anything right then. Talked to me some more, let me cry all over you. I’d been bottling it all up for two weeks just surviving and staying on the run, and here someone was, giving me sympathy, trying to give me hope. I’m afraid I was...sort of a hot mess when I finally lost it.”

“You’re human. You’re allowed to feel things,” she told him, voice low and soothing, just like it had been that night. “I think you forgot that.”

Was he? Had he been allowed any of that in the last four years? Had he allowed himself that? Like he’d told Jiya, there had only been the mission. “You took me to see the Lifeboat. And I was there too. The...the future version of me.” It still feel eerie to remember seeing that other version of himself standing next to the Lifeboat, assuring him it was all real. Both himself and Lucy a bit older, a bit greyer than they were even now, but undeniable. “That more than anything convinced me it couldn’t be some crazy hoax. That the journal you’d just handed me, the time machine you’d told me about that would be ready in two years, was my future.”

“I see.” He could almost see the wheels turning in her brain, how carefully she picked her words to ask, “Were we...together?”

Did she hope for that, or not? “We were obviously a team. And when I read that in the journal, that made me believe it.”

“Garcia,” gently chiding him. “Just tell me.”

“Honestly, I don’t know. I was three drinks in, heartbroken, missing Lorena, and not thinking very clearly. And they--we--were very careful to give me nothing clear or specific. Frustratingly cryptic, actually. But I always wondered. Because I thought maybe that other me was wearing a different wedding ring than this one.” He glanced down at the thin white gold band that hadn’t left his hand ever since he reclaimed it from his personals during the prison break. Mustered his courage, and cast the die, because if nothing else, Jiya would kill him if he didn’t say it. “And I know how I act around someone when I...care for them.” _Swing and a miss. C’mon._

“And you’d have had every reason to not want to believe it, because at that point, you wanted Lorena back.”

“Yes.” He steeled himself one more time. “He told me I’d save my wife and daughter. I assumed he meant Lorena and Iris. Obviously that’s not going to happen now, but then?” A daughter--a thought he had barely let himself touch in the past year or so since he’d started to accept Iris and Lorena were out of his reach. Another daughter? There were still days he could barely stand to remember being a father because it hurt so damn much. 

“So you and I are maybe together in the future.”

“Maybe. Look, remember what you said in that basement.” Gingerly approaching that subject, given they’d been arguing mere hours ago about him trying to blow himself and everyone else up. “I think that God led me to you, and you to me. That we were drawn together to fight Rittenhouse. Us being here, now, our being partners? That’s fate.”

She nodded, accepting that. “It looks like that’s the case. I was meant to give you that journal. And I’m pretty sure it must have been you that pulled me out of the bay.” Her eyes searched his. “We know we’ll likely have a Lifeboat capable of it. I couldn’t believe it before. But now? It fits. It feels...right.” She gave a faint smile, amused at something. “Plus I have my rescuer’s jacket in my closet in my mother’s house. He put it over me because it was January. I hung it up, would look at it sometimes in the next year and try to get some clues. Nothing really. But it looks a heck of a lot like that black leather jacket you were wearing when you walked into the bunker. Which I’m sure is packed right now in your stuff to go to Louisiana.” She shook her head, amused and confused all at once. “Where did you even find time to get clothes after a prison escape anyway? It wasn’t what you were wearing when you were arrested.”

“You’re probably imagining some epic adventure. It’s not nearly as impressive as it sounds. Denise was waiting with a car about a half mile down the road,” he said dryly. “And she had clothes with her.”

She gave that dorky snorting giggle he loved. “Oh God. Oh no. Was that the most awkward car ride of your life?”

He raised a hand and said solemnly, “Top five for sure.” He could laugh about it now. At the moment he’d been terrified of saying or doing anything that might make her dump him right back in prison, or even in a black site. Enthralled by seeing sunlight again, but all too aware of Denise’s wintery disapproval in the driver’s seat, how much she made it obvious she hated every single moment of this. When the laughter died down again, he decided to hell with it. Jiya was right. They might both know it, but she needed to hear it. “We were meant to be here and fight this. But love...Lucy, that’s always a choice.”

She looked at him again, those luminous dark eyes seeming to pierce him straight to the soul, through any pretense or defense he could hope to put up. “Are you saying you love me?”

He couldn’t help it, slipping into Croatian to say it before he said it in English, because it felt the truest to say it like that first. “ _Volim te._ Yes. I love you.” Instinctively he felt himself tense, ready to hurry away if need be.

Something in expression trembled and broke, and she looked away as if it was too much, fingers tightening on the journal. “But you love Lorena too.”

She was afraid, and how could she not be? He was terrified right now. “Yes. I loved her, and that’s a part of me until the day I die. But the life I had with her is gone. Even if Emma hadn’t changed things, I knew that was true.” He reached out, daring to touch her arm, fingertips pressing against her skin with the lightest of pressure. _Your perfect Lorena_ , she’d snapped at him. “And you’re wrong. Lorena...wasn’t perfect. She was brave and fierce and she cared so much for people. But she had a hot temper, and a proud and stubborn streak a mile wide. I almost always had to be the one to start us talking after an argument. She was fun, and funny, and happy. But she always needed people to be OK because she hated to see them suffering. She’d sometimes try to tease me out of my blue moods after a hard mission when sometimes what I really needed was to talk, or to have her just be there...and, I swear, it could drive me _insane_ because it was like she couldn’t stand me being unhappy, but she couldn’t let the darkness work its way out, or face it directly. She needed to fix it right then. And she saw things a lot more black and white than you do. With her, often it was right, or it was wrong, and you couldn’t easily convince her otherwise. Stubborn as anything.”

“So that’s how you understand Wyatt.” Wyatt was even starker than Lorena had been, but yes, he had to admit it helped.

“She wasn’t perfect,” he repeated. “But yes, I loved her, _because_ she wasn’t perfect.” Even though he’d known long before he’d told Lucy so that he could never go back to Lorena. She couldn’t have understood or condoned the things he’d done. But now if he’d learned anything from her, even after her death and her strange resurrection now, it was the strength to carry on. She’d lost her first love at seventeen, the boy she’d clearly meant to marry, to make a life with for decades to come. But she’d had the courage to live her life after that, to go forward into the world and make it a better place, to love again. She’d never made him feel like a shoddy replacement, which after his home life as a kid, seeing how badly his parents had replaced beloved first spouses, had been a deep-seated anxiety he hadn’t even fully acknowledged. “You’re not Lorena. But I don’t want you to be. I’m not looking for a replacement.” Though when she sat there, absorbing that, he couldn’t help but ask, feeling his nerves jangling and like she’d left him dangling over a precipice, “Am I alone in this, or do you love me?”

She nodded. “Yeah. I do love you, Garcia.” Such simple words, and in the big picture, they changed very little. He’d known after that talk in Gettysburg, both of them so carefully stepping around the subject, that she cared for him, that she held hopes of them having something together. But Jiya hadn’t been wrong. Actually hearing it from her lips felt like a balm, soothing aches and wounds that had been so much a part of him for the last four years that he’d long since ceased to notice them. He’d lived with the pain so long, made it a part of him, that he’d forgotten what it was like to live in a moment of pure grace, where suddenly nothing hurt. 

“You never answered me in Chinatown. Why are you here?”

He hadn’t answered her then, no. It would have been the worst moment possible, and he’d idiotically caught himself in that trap and almost ruined everything for them both. But he could now. “For you.”

Her brows creased, a wry, almost affectionately irritated smile on her lips. “I told you, I believe you about the journal and São Paulo.”

“No. Not because of you. Though that’s true. But I’m here _for_ you, Lucy.” Because she’d believed in him when he couldn’t even believe in himself.

She blinked, eyes downcast for a moment, lashes dark against her fair skin, as if taking that in. Then her chin tipped up, determination in the set of her jaw. She stood up then, pushing his hand off her arm, but only to move over next to him on the couch. She sat down, one hand landing on the cushion right next to his thigh, leaning in half over him. She held there, hesitating, and he could sense the excitement in her and in him, that nervous joy at so much potential, a vast and unexplored territory that they’d started into together with those words. Anything seemed possible in that moment, and it caught his breath as both thrill and terror. He could close that gap, lean in only a little, and kiss her. He could even lead her upstairs to his bed, or hers, and damn the thin walls. 

She looked at him, and she was everything he wanted, everything he’d never let himself truly imagine except unconsciously in guilty dreams, because the man he’d become deserved nothing, let alone someone like her. But she knew him, she was no naive girl brushing away his sins from a safe distance, she’d been there and seen him at his worst and most ruthless and savage. Yet somehow, here she was, looking at him and obviously wanting him, so improbably finding him worthy.

He drew in a breath to say that maybe it was better to not give in to a charged moment, but as ever, that communication between them seemed to work without words. “We have time,” she said, voice soft but her tone warm. “And I don’t want to rush this. Not this time.” She sat back, but she reached for his hand, for a moment pressed palm to palm, her hand warm but so small against his own, then she laced her fingers with his, holding on tight. She had the calluses of a woman who’d spent months helping rebuild a Lifeboat, learning to fight and to shoot, cooking meals, doing anything and everything. She wasn’t the academic he’d first encountered in the burning wreckage of the _Hindenburg_. She wasn’t even the woman he’d met in a bar in Brazil. She was someone entirely new, her own hard-won self.

Bringing their joined hands up, he pressed a kiss to the back of her hand, unable to entirely let her go without some small mark of affection. “I’m really not sure how we got to this, given I beat even Mr. Darcy for disastrous first impressions.”

“You grew on me,” she told him with an indulgent smile.

“What, like a fungus?” She reached out and gave his shoulder a playful shove with her free hand. Now he hesitated himself, wanting to bask in the bliss of having this, but it wasn’t all sunshine and red wine. Love meant hard work, and facing the darkness, and even Lorena had learned to face his in time--to the point she’d demanded he talk to someone after Damascus. “What happened in Zürich?” No, that wasn’t the right question, was it? “It didn’t seem...like you to advocate just killing someone who’d surrendered, who we had safely imprisoned.”

“I shot Jesse James in the back. Injured. Unarmed. Captured.”

“Because you thought you had to preserve history. This was a little different. You were obviously upset. Said it was no mercy to lock him away for life.” He could feel it--he still wasn’t asking the right question.

“Tell me about what happened to you in prison.” He could hear it wasn’t a request.

“They locked me in that cell. You visited. You saw it. A cot, a fairly pathetic pillow, a sink, a toilet, and that desk with a very uncomfortable seat. Not sure why I got a desk. No writing utensils.” He smiled, knowing it was a bit of a savage looking expression. “No writing utensils. Might have used shards of them to stab myself, or slice my wrist, or swallow them. No sheets to rip up to hang myself. I got a towel for twenty minutes when I got escorted for my weekly shower. The scrubs couldn’t be tied in a knot. No shoes when I was in the cell, so no shoelaces. Twenty three hours a day, guards looking in every half hour, even when I was trying to sleep. I got out for an hour a day to go walk around a metal cage for my exercise. The early days, I spent a lot of time trying to think of any way to kill myself, and decided I’d hope that I could manage it somehow, eventually. Tried to hope you’d find some way to save my family, but I knew I was never getting out, and at least we’d gotten Rittenhouse. Hated Denise most, but yes, I hated you, wished you’d at least had the decency to let me die. You protested some, but you still let them take me to rot there.”

She took the news of him being decidedly suicidal rather calmly, much as she had in 1954, her gaze not wavering, her fingers not tightening in his, but he didn’t get the impression she brushed it off. “So if you understand why I’d think it’s better to be dead than locked away like that, if you thought about killing yourself so much, why are you so upset that I said it?”

“Because then Denise Christopher came, and she and I had this little back-and-forth tango of trying to play each other--two experienced interrogators gets messy sometimes.” He’d amused himself trying to sharpen his claws on her some, given in no way did he forgive or trust her, and seeing her there, obviously wanting something from him, gave him a gratifying sense of power. But his sardonic amusement evaporated once she confessed why she was there. “She had to show me some of her cards, admit what had changed that she gave a shit. She told me that Rittenhouse captured you. That your own _mother_ captured you. And suddenly I wasn’t just waiting to die in there. I knew why you kept me alive in that basement, why God had let me stay alive. Rittenhouse wasn’t dead, and it wasn’t over yet.”

“So by the time I came to see you, you were ready to push to get out.”

“Yes. I had some purpose again. Some use.”

“How did you get stabbed if you were in solitary?”

“Pure chance. I’d been to the infirmary for a tetanus shot. They were walking me through the cafeteria, and it was mealtime. I wa under strict orders to talk to nobody. Somebody said ‘hello’ to me with a spoon shank.” He’d sensed it and turned enough at the last moment that it became a shallower puncture rather than the deep stab-and-twist the attacker probably intended to make him bleed to death internally. He’d reacted instinctively, knowing there was no other weapon and he was fighting for his life, that his hands and feet were chained, that if his attacker got in another, better blow that he was a sitting duck. He’d broken his attacker’s wrist, grabbing the shank, and stabbing him in the neck in the spot to sever his carotid artery, clumsily stepping back to avoid the pulsing arterial blood spray, all in a few seconds before the guards could react. Standing there awkwardly clutching his bleeding side as best he could with the handcuffs and chains, knowing that Rittenhouse had found a way to touch him here, and they wouldn’t stop. “Good thing I got that tetanus shot, huh?”

“It’s not funny.”

“No, it really wasn’t.”

“Even in the infirmary, though. You seemed so...calm. Frustrated, but calm. Like you were just annoyed and inconvenienced.”

“Denise was there. I could hardly let her see how frantic I was to get out, how scared I was that Rittenhouse had someone literally in prison lying in wait just hoping for a ten second window to try to kill me. Couldn’t hand her that card. So I managed to put on my best face for your visits.” He didn’t want to dig into that whole well of pain and shame and darkness, but obviously letting it sit had done nothing. “What are you asking?”

“What were you really like, when we weren’t there?”

“A raging mess. You know what prolonged solitary confinement does to a person? The depression, the anxiety, the way your grasp on reality slips, the paranoia and obsessiveness that develops? There’s a reason the UN classified it as a method of torture.”

“What if I do know?” 

He couldn’t help but stare at her. “Did they--” Now maybe, finally, he had the right question. “Did they keep you isolated?”

Her voice, when she answered, went flat. “For the first six weeks. Not as bad as your six months, true. And it was nicer than your cell. A real bathroom. A real bed. But it hit my claustrophobia badly. No window, no clocks, no books. Nothing to do but sit there and think. I slept a lot. Some would come in with a meal, refuse to answer my questions. Then someone else would come in and try to befriend me, tell me that my friends weren’t coming for me, that they’d never been my friends, trying to tell me it wasn’t my fault that I hadn’t known, that I’d fallen under a bad influence that told me so many wrong things about Rittenhouse.”

He was familiar with the concept, of softening someone’s defenses by isolating them, slowly trying to turn their way of thinking, tapping into the increasing desperation and paranoia and replacing it with a new reality, the promise of escape from an unbearable situation. “Solitary confinement and gradual conditioning.” Her mother. Her own fucking mother. God, it made his father’s beatings seem so mundanely straightforward.

“They gave me bedsheets. Silverware. Things I could have used to kill myself. But I decided I wasn’t going to. I was going to play along, make them trust me, and I was going to destroy them, somehow.” She looked at him, as if daring him to be shocked. “Because I thought they'd gotten rid of you and nobody else was left. I was the only chance left, so I couldn't die. Not yet.” He gripped her hand tighter in his. “I thought about you in prison too. How much you must hate me. Sometimes I hated you too for stealing the Mothership and starting all of it.”

Even if she’d given him the journal, he’d chosen to follow it, so he deserved that. “What happened then?”

“They started letting my mother in to talk to me, to convince me. She figured if anyone could turn me, it would be her.”

“Jesus. If she wasn’t already dead, I swear I’d kill her myself.” Though he wouldn’t claim Emma had done the world a favor, because she was far worse than Carol Preston.

“I wonder sometimes what it was like for her. I looked and Benjamin Cahill taught one class for only two years at Stanford Med. My mother would have had no reason to take that class. She lied to me saying he was her professor. I expect they had orders from Rittenhouse. Have a pureblood heir, get married. She was a junior in college. Still almost a child. Young as that kid who killed himself in Zürich tonight. She slept with him, got pregnant, and had me, but if they ordered them to get married, she balked at that. Didn’t marry Benjamin. Gave me her surname, not his. Married Henry instead, had Amy, didn’t tell me about Rittenhouse when I was a teenager like it seems was considered normal. She must have claimed she’d done her duty and they could shut the hell up about the rest of her life, and she seemed to be ready to take that to her grave when she was dying of cancer, because she’d sunk into a coma without ever telling me. Life with my dad--Henry, I mean--must have made her see that there was more to the world, made her see Rittenhouse for the insanity it was. Maybe without him, that’s why this version of her was so eagerly involved, and willing to do anything to bring me into the fold. But...that’s probably what I am. The product of some fucking Rittenhouse _breeding program_ every bit as creepy as an SS _Lebensborn_.”

The bitter self-loathing in her voice cut him to the bone. The horror in her family never seemed to stop. His own family life had been fucked up enough, but at least it was a straightforward kind. “That’s maybe how you came to be. That’s not what--or who--you are.”

She managed a watery smile. “ _Hvala_.”

“ _Molim_.”

She moved closer, the warm weight of her tucked up against his side, and he put his right arm around her, drawing her in tighter. Even as small as she was, she felt like a bulwark there determined to guard him, stone and mortar stubbornly withstanding the tides and storms and waves. Maybe like the seawall in Zadar where he’d once taken Iris, built with pipes that sang in all different tones when the water came in, something beautiful and protective all at once. “She was my mother. She kissed me when I hurt myself as a kid. Bought me books anytime I asked. She loved me. But even that version of her also criticized me constantly. Then the woman she was here she also kidnapped me, let me be imprisoned, tried herself to brainwash me. She wouldn’t have let them kill me if I hadn’t played along, but she would never, ever have let me go. So I wasn’t her daughter in her end. I was a thing. Her heir, her tool. Only good so long as I was of use.” 

“So was I.” Snuggled up as she was against him, the smell of her hair wafted into his nose: strawberry. She must use that shampoo herself now that Amy was gone. He still couldn’t help but feel like he could never atone for that.

She lifted her head, glanced up at his face. Her free hand was on his shoulder, thumb resting lightly on the knot of scar there from the bullet and the surgery. “You still are. You’ve never gotten out of thinking of yourself as only having a place here so long as you’re _useful_ to us.” She squeezed his hand in hers. “You’re one of us, you know that?”

He wished he could believe it, wanted to believe it. Though hearing it helped. “I’m trying,” he said as honestly as he could. “But I had to let go of so much. Cut it out of me so I could keep going. There’s been only the mission, and what I needed to do. You saw how I was.” He’d been a weapon, and then a tool, but trying so hard to do the mission, be useful, get results. “It’s funny. In Chechnya there were women--they called them the ‘black widows’. Mostly ones whose husbands had been killed by the Russians. The radicals recruited them, turned them into terrorists, suicide bombers. All that time I spent fighting in Chechnya I never quite understood them. Fighting was one thing, but I couldn’t see how someone could turn into the kind of fanatic who’d destroy anything, _anyone_ , in the name of a cause. Grief and revenge and someone saying there’s a way to make your pain matter--guess I found out.” Standing there in a basement ready to take out himself, Lucy, Wyatt, and damn well anyone else in the building above them, Rittenhouse and innocent alike, and anyone else who’d stand in his way. So he’d become a Black Widower. 

“I’m sorry. I was the one who...recruited you to this.”

Somehow he wasn’t surprised that Lucy would try to take the blame on herself. “You told me the fight was there, and that it was important. I let myself become that.”

“So did I, in the end.” They weren’t looking at each other now, curled up together as they were, but there was no need. “I faked my way onto the mission, because I was determined to blow up the Mothership while it was in the past. And if that meant blowing up my mom, Emma, or even myself, I would do it. Because I thought Rufus and Wyatt were dead, and you were never getting out. I thought I was the only one left fighting, and that nothing was ever going to be right again anyway for me, so I wanted to end it. So…” Her voice grew thick with emotion or maybe tears. “I know exactly how you felt in that basement, don’t I?” 

He couldn’t answer for a moment, even a simple _yes_ beyond him. Everyone gone, dead or slipping away, and nothing had worked, nothing would ever bring them back, and he’d become a monster besides, so he might as well just finish it. His arm tightened around her, and he couldn’t say for sure whether it was for her comfort or his, or more likely both. 

She went on, voice still low. “I shot an innocent man in St. Mihiel. All he did was try to bring Nicholas in for treatment. He got nosy, Emma shot him--enough to injure him. She and Mom expected me to finish him off. To prove I was loyal. So I did it. Jesse James was at least a menace, and I was keeping history intact. That? That was different.”

How many times he would want to kill Carol Preston in one night was a marvel, and Emma’s ledger of all the ways she deserved to die was so far in the red he wasn’t sure it could withstand one more entry, but he mentally added it anyway. “What do you want me to say?” he told her softly. “That you did what you had to do?”

She gave a snort of derision at that, a warm puff of breath against his shoulder. “That’s what Wyatt said.” Somehow he wasn’t surprised. Wyatt’s worldview couldn’t see it any differently.

“You did it because you thought it was necessary to complete the mission. And maybe someday you’ll be able to forgive yourself.”

“Maybe. But I don’t want to be that person again. Where a life doesn’t have value. Where the mission is the only thing that matters. That Rittenhouse agent who killed himself tonight said exactly that. You and I have both been there. I need my life to be more than that.” She leaned closer, put her head on his shoulder. “And I think you do too. We need to choose more than that.”

Holding her tight, he couldn’t help but remember what he’d said to Mileva Marić. _It hurts right now. But it’s not the end. I lost my wife, but there’s someone else now. I have to believe you’ll find someone who loves you for who you are._ Lorena had been the partner he’d needed at thirty, someone bright and funny and brave and with the courage to live her life boldly, who’d helped him face plenty of his fears about himself. But she couldn’t have met the man he was now and felt the same. Lucy and her fierce compassion and empathy and ability to navigate a thousand different moral compromises without sacrificing herself was who he needed now, in this fight with all its ripples and shades of grey, where he doubted so much about the world and himself. 

Marić had told him in return: _Then I wish you the best, and hope you two will be very happy together._

He couldn’t say for sure. Anything could happen. But sitting there on the couch with Lucy, he let himself feel the recklessness of hope. He loved her, she loved him, and they would be there for each other. It wasn’t exactly a traditional courtship, but then, these were strange and unusual times. The path they’d take would be their own. And he wouldn’t stop trying to become the man who could stand by her side and be worthy of her. He’d turned away from the worst of himself, told himself there were lines now that he couldn’t cross. That had to be a good beginning.

The next thing he knew, someone loudly cleared their throat. Instinct took over and he was up like a shot, or at least trying, but apparently he and Lucy had fallen asleep on the couch somewhere in the middle of the night. She tried doing the same, so his efforts mostly just ended up further entangled. He ended up flat on his back with Lucy awkwardly half draped over him, and he glanced over to see Connor standing there. They must have fallen asleep, Lucy tucked in against his side. He’d slept surprisingly well for it being such a terrible couch, given he hadn’t awoken at all to realize it was Lucy there, or even that half-dreaming state of perhaps thinking it was Lorena. Maybe the soundest night he’d slept in a while, and he couldn’t pretend that having someone he loved there had nothing to do with that fact.

“Good morning, lovebirds.” Connor grinned in amusement. “Up late chatting, we were?” _I hate you so much right now._ “It’s seven thirty. Nobody else is up yet. The rest have slept in. I turned the lamp off. You’re welcome.” 

He sat up, feet on the floor, and rubbed his eyes. Decided it was better to just disengage and not give them the satisfaction of knowing how utterly self-conscious he suddenly was. Besides, what did he have to apologize for, in the end? Loving Lucy, falling asleep with her--no, he wasn’t going to apologize for that. He wasn’t going to hide it either. Seemed like they all assumed the two of them were having sex anyway, so it wasn’t like this was a surprise. So he played it as casual as he could, unwilling to be ashamed of it. Especially given Wyatt and Jessica had treated the whole damn bunker to something close to a porno soundtrack. “Is there coffee?”

“Just started.” 

He stretched, suppressing a wince as his scarred shoulder let him know that having Lucy tucked up against it all night hadn’t been the best idea. “Great.” 

Lucy slipped past him, hand on his arm, and leaned in to say with a smirk, “I’ve got the shower first.” Sighing, he watched her hurry upstairs, journal in her hand, not even inclined to argue. 

Heading up that way, he ran into Denise in the hallway. Something about the tight way she held her features, holding back the emotion, made him stop. No, they hadn’t been friends before this timeline, but they were now. The grip he’d kept on his resentment of her for condemning him to a living hell eased. If Lucy could forgive him, he needed to be a better man and let go of the last traces of mistrust. He’d deserved them. Denise had done her job, mercilessly and coldly, but given the chance here, she’d been a good friend to him. He had to think given more time, he and that other Denise were on the way to become more than reluctant allies. 

“You look like hell. What’s up?” She hesitated, looking him over. He pushed open the door to his room. “I’m gonna have to wait for the shower,” he pointed out, “so come in.” 

She perched on the chair, nudging aside a duffel bag containing, among other things, the black leather jacket Lucy had mentioned. “Nothing happened. Not in particular.”

“You’re missing them,” he guessed. He’d seen that weight falling on her harder and harder. “This is the longest you’ve been away from them, isn’t it? Three months now?” At least in the bunker she’d been able to go home to them every night. Which, to be fair, the rest of them sort of resented given their own quasi-imprisonment, though not like he’d been able to protest it.

She nodded, reaching back and pulling her hair back into a messy bun. She hadn’t slept well, dark circles under her eyes. “Yeah.”

“I spent close to four months away once. On an NSA contract in Crimea. It takes its toll.” He’d been lucky to call home every few days. Hearing Lorena’s voice, and telling Iris over the phone he loved her, but imagining how much he’d missed, hurt. “I know you don’t remember it, but with the Reagan mission, I told you to get your ass home to your family.”

“You did tell me,” she told him dryly. “Got very indignant that I’d sit there doing paperwork instead, and insisted you could handle it. I suppose...that conversation was even more personal for you. Because you’d...you’d had a family yourself.” 

“I told you I couldn’t save them. But that I would have given anything for even another second with them. I think about it a lot now. How much I was gone for the job. How much I took for granted. How much I wish I’d never taken that damn contract in Minsk.” He sat down on the bed, looking at her face, willing her to listen. “I thought they were safe at home. That the danger I was in from my job wouldn’t touch them there. I was wrong. Rittenhouse broke in and they murdered my little girl in her bed. Murdered my wife when she came to check, thinking the silencer was Iris coughing. Denise, you can’t protect them by keeping them away from you. Rittenhouse doesn’t play by those rules. So go find another house in what the hell was it--St. John? Wherever. Rent the house. Michelle’s in tech. You’ve said she can work remotely. Mark and Olivia can change schools.” 

“Is it fair to uproot the kids--”

“Is it fair right now? Do we know we won’t still be fighting this war in a year, two years, five years? They’ll make new friends. If the schools are worse, fine, you spend more time on the homework with them. Maybe they’ll be annoyed, but they’ll see in time it was the right thing. Your kids need their moms. Both of them. They need you there for homework and dance recitals and all of it. Your wife needs you as more than a voice on the phone. So you might as well be there and love them as much as you can. Because even without Rittenhouse, they won’t be there forever.”

Denise sat there for a minute or more. Through the open bedroom door, he heard the shower start across the hall. Then she looked up at him. “All right.” The smile she gave him looked genuine, dark eyes bright with gratitude. “Thank you, Garcia.”


	17. 3x05: Addams Family Values (Connor/Jessica: LaPlace, Louisiana/Manhattan, Kansas, September 2018)

One thing he could say for life as a federal asset-slash-fugitive--it was rarely boring. Though perhaps “fugitive” wasn’t the correct word there either. Connor wasn’t on the run from the government, unlike Garcia apparently had been in that other timeline. He was on the run from Rittenhouse, though really, they’d gotten the damn time machine in the end and if there was any honor in them they’d have left him and his alone. Fool he’d been to think that they did, but they’d seemed so innocuous when they came to him with that grant, wanting to invest in his dream. He’d been naive then, not questioning the motives of an “charitable organization” he assumed was something like the Shriners or whatever in wanting to invest in time travel. Hadn’t thought it out except as a scientific wonder and challenge, not how it was Prometheus giving fire to humankind.

Time travel changed everything, as they’d proved, and in the wrong hands, the power could be devastating. For his foolishness, his cowardice, too many had paid the price. At least Garcia, wrongheaded as he’d apparently been, had fought back. One man alone on the run, framed and put on Interpol’s radar, and he’d stolen the damn Mothership, and made Rittenhouse tremble. It had taken Connor Mason with his billions and his power far too long to even say “no” to them, let alone fight back. The good thing about losing everything was that he had nothing left to lose. The power, fame, and wealth--he’d proven he could lose those.

But it was the memory of nearly two dozen employees, good people, who’d been coolly murdered by Rittenhouse that drove him now. He’d chosen them, recruited them, brought them into Mason Industries. They were his people, and they had friends and families who grieved them. At least before he lost everything he’d made certain the survivors wanted for nothing, though that could hardly make up for endless grief. All he could do was give every talent and idea he had to making things right: first getting Rufus back, and then taking down Rittenhouse.

So: perhaps not a fugitive. Under government protection, then? Though Denise had come to her senses more than from the bunker days and let them out more or less at will, so long as they stayed within reasonable recall, and didn’t do anything stupid to attract too much attention. They’d jumped down to Louisiana, a town called LaPlace, only two weeks ago, gotten mostly settled into the new place. Hadn’t ventured out much as yet aside from the basic grocery runs. 

The new safehouse site was an old sugarcane plantation, apparently, and it was another of those moments he was vaguely thankful to be a British black man rather than an American one, because there was something oddly fraught about being black in the American South, even without that more pointed context. He had visions of Rufus joking awkwardly about a black man sleeping in the “big house” and whether it was a satisfying turnabout or creepy or both. Given roughly half the people he’d seen in the grocery store were black, a significant shift from mostly-white Gettysburg, he had to wonder how they wrestled with that shadow in their midst. 

The government had gotten the place for a song given what poor shape it had been in, abandoned for at least a decade, and even now the smell of fresh paint hung heavily throughout the place. If it attracted too many onlookers presumably wanting to gawk at the old place being obviously fixed up and renovated, the story was that they were finishing up the place for the National Historic Trust. Which, according to Denise, was the place’s fate anyway--turn it into some kind of historic site. He admittedly hadn’t looked up the details of the history, because it might not be the nation of his birth and upbringing, but he knew enough to have awareness that historically, “Southern plantation” and “history” inevitably meant nothing good for people of color. He left that to Lucy. 

“Hey, Connor, can you turn the AC up?” Wyatt asked. “God, if we thought Gettysburg was bad…”

“Weren’t you in the desert for years, Wyatt?” Garcia half-turned from the passenger seat, presumably to smirk at Wyatt in the seats behind him. Even in a Chevy Suburban, they all agreed the man claimed the passenger seat by default due to his height. Connor tried to not think too much about the ridiculous gas mileage and how he could have built something better, but he also couldn’t help but see in the size upgrade from Gettysburg’s Civic that they were getting close. Like building more seats into the Lifeboat, like how they’d given Jiya one of the bigger bedrooms that could more easily suit two, the bigger car was a serious declaration of intent. They were getting Rufus back, and soon, so there had best be a place ready for him in all their plans. 

Though that was a double-edged sword. Carefully creating that space meant looking at the emptiness that existed there now. He wasn’t sure he could define whether he’d felt like a far older brother, or maybe an uncle, towards Rufus, but point was: the feeling was there, whatever exact shape it took. Ever since he’d met that brilliant, awkward boy with such a stern sense of responsibility, he couldn’t help but feel like Rufus was his own responsibility. He hadn’t gone to 1888, and even though logically he knew his being there wouldn’t have helped--if a crack team like Garcia and Wyatt couldn’t protect him, Connor Mason certainly couldn’t--he still felt the loss that Rufus had died there without him, that he had failed when he promised the boy’s mother that he’d look after him. Maybe he wouldn’t go on the mission this time either, really couldn’t due to needing to hold down the console back in the present, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t give it his all towards getting the Lifeboat and the team ready and giving them every possible chance of success. That was part of being a scientist too--releasing the work into the world and having faith in those who used it.

“Yeah, I was, _Garcia_. Doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy air conditioning. Besides, the Middle East is a dry heat. Gettysburg was like having people throw buckets of warm water on you. This is like being in a sauna and you’re mummified in soaking wet hot towels to boot.”

Connor sighed and turned up the air conditioning to full blast. “Well, that’s picturesque.” Heading eastward towards New Orleans, he would never give up on the idea that American drivers were erratic and awful, but having seen some of the others drive, he’d happily grabbed the keys. He’d made damn sure to leave the security system on given Denise was living about two miles away with Michelle and the kids, and the alarm keyfob would send up the alarm if anything went wrong. “Tell me it’s fine that we all left,” he muttered.

He must have said it more loudly than he thought. Lucy leaned forward, her hand lightly touching his shoulder. “It’s fine that we all left,” she told him. “We need to get out some or we’re going to go crazy. There’s a reason the USO existed, you know? Why they brought singers and plays and the like to the troops. Soldiers need a break from the war sometimes. And we’ve been non-stop for so long.”

“If Rittenhouse is coming for us,” Garcia said, a hard edge suddenly in his voice, “trust me, one person left behind isn’t going to make a difference.” Yes, if anyone would know, apparently he would. Connor had read his report about the assassination squad sent to kill the family he’d had in the other timeline. Couldn’t blame him that he didn’t want to talk about it aloud--some things were easier written than spoken.

“You don’t think they are?” Jiya asked him.

“I think they’ve recognized, as we have, that chasing down each others’ safehouses is pointless.” Connor glanced over at him, seeing him looking absently lost in thought. “I managed a strike team on Mason Industries to steal the Mothership--sorry, Connor--because I planned every detail for months, and nobody expected it. After that, everyone was on high alert, and you’re left scrambling a team in a hurry to try to catch an opportunity. You came after me, and how’d that all work out for you? The assault on Rittenhouse’s headquarters earlier this year? Didn’t work. It’s a waste of time and resources to try to catch them in their den. I knew from the beginning this isn’t going to be a knockout war, got dumb enough to believe it for a moment with David Rittenhouse’s creepy a--”

“Garcia,” Lucy said, her tone brooking no argument, “we all agreed we needed to get out for the night specifically to get away from the fight for a few hours.”

In the rearview mirror, Connor caught Garcia’s sheepish smile. “Fine. First one to talk about it buys the drinks.”

“Then it’s good you’re getting a steady paycheck in this timeline,” Wyatt said with a snicker. “Besides, that safehouse is apparently in the middle of Kansas, and who really wants to go there?”

“Dorothy,” Garcia answered him dryly.

“I’m pretty sure Emma qualifies as the Wicked Witch of the West.”

“Looks like Jiya’s buying the drinks,” Wyatt’s tone turned absurdly cheerful.

“Oh, c’mon! Lucy?” Jiya's tone turned irritated. “Doesn’t him talking about Kansas count?”

Lucy heaved a dramatic sigh. “Fine. Change the topic, and the first person to talk tonight about Emma, Rittenhouse, Rittenhouse being in Kansas, Garcia’s adventures with the Mothership, the Mothership, the Lifeboat, the Lifeline, any of our missions, or anything else related to any of that, after _right now_ buys the drinks.”

“I vote we avoid Bourbon Street,” Jiya said. “Touristy as hell.”

“Too much opportunity to run into trouble, when we’re trying to stay low profile.”

“Lucy?” Wyatt turned to their erstwhile referee. No surprise they all instinctively turned to Lucy as arbiter of this thing.

“Doesn’t count, Wyatt. But you’re getting close to it, Garcia. Quit it.”

“ _Da, moj draga_ ,” Garcia replied with over-the-top sweetness. 

“Oh come on, no Croatian!” Wyatt protested. “God, if I have to listen to--”

“You lot are about to make me pull this car over.” He shook his head, even though he tried to keep from smiling. Family indeed. So many years of letting nobody get too close--trying to be the impressive tech mogul, the cool guy, the billionaire genius. He wouldn’t say he’d been _happy_ in that bunker, given that was pretty impossible, but he’d found things in himself that he hadn’t even known he’d lacked.

As he parked the car, Wyatt said, “Alley Gators? This looks kinda like a down home bar.”

“What’s wrong with that?” He gave a snort of amusement. “What, you think a British accent and a formerly fat bank account means I only like cocktail lounges where the drinks are at least $30 each?”

From the expression on Wyatt’s face, that was a firm _yes_. “You said it was my pick. Well, here we are. Excellent pub grub, so I’m told, and karaoke.”

Wyatt’s groan was buried by Jiya’s yip of excitement. “New rule,” Garcia said, a delighted grin spreading across his face. The sight of a giant man with a look of unholy glee and rather charming dimples--well, if Lucy hadn’t been interested? But he’d found them asleep on the couch just before they left Gettysburg, curled up together so peacefully and naturally. Obviously they’d finally found their way to each other. He couldn’t be unhappy for that, or Denise’s clear joy in seeing Michelle again. Any happiness they could find in the midst of this was something to celebrate. “Anyone who doesn’t sing buys drinks.”

“Rule accepted,” Lucy judged, giving Garcia a smirk of her own.

“Lucy--” Wyatt protested.

“Nobody said you had to be good,” Jiya argued. “Half the fun is in terrible karaoke.” Wyatt’s grumpily crossed arms as they walked in said plenty, but he went, all the same.

It was indeed a down home bar that reminded him of Carrie Thompson’s juke joint, a bit ramshackle and rough about the edges, comfortably worn. The wood of the chairs and tables and floor all had the patina of years and the nicks and scratches of hard use. But it had that air of something special. He’d read the place had closed for about two days during the worst of Hurricane Katrina as the storm passed over, and then promptly opened again. They’d been there giving out drinks and water and what edible food they had to the people who showed up, holding a capella karaoke since they had no electricity for the karaoke system, and being a place where some of the people of a battered and bewildered city could come for something familiar and comforting to escape the horror they were currently living, could post requests for information on loved ones, could leave messages for others, could bring or get supplies from a growing communal cache and exchange. It became a rallying point, and something of that clung to it still.

Seated and with drinks and food ordered, the DJ booted up the system. After taking a sip of her own pint and clearing her throat, she turned on the microphone. “All right, all right, I know what y’all are here for. DJ Kamala Keener, happy to be back at Alley Gator’s again for another Friday Free-For-All. For those of you joining us for the first time, that means a voucher for a free draft beer to any brave souls singing, but here’s the catch: the system will randomly select a song and you have to sing it. Tonight’s theme is…” She pressed a button on her laptop and the lyrics display screen went tie-dye. “The ‘70’s!”

From the way it was a well-rehearsed patter done in a smoky voice, obviously she’d been at it a for a while. Connor estimated she was about forty, so perhaps she had been the karaoke DK here even as far back as Katrina. “First victim?” Keener asked, scanning the crowd. “No, not you, Shawn. Let someone else have a turn and let folks have a drink before you bust all our ears.” A ripple of laughter, and a young woman in a UCLA tank top headed up, and promptly got stuck with Looking Glass’ “Brandy”.

“‘Guardians of the Galaxy 2’ flashbacks here.” Jiya shook her head. “Oh, seriously? Do I need to make you all sit down and watch the full canon of the MCU?”

“Yes?” Lucy said hesitantly.

“Which one of them is Rocket, though?” he asked Jiya with a knowing grin, and it felt good to see her smile and laugh, some of the sheer endurance that seemed to have burned itself into her features lifting from her. Besides, it also felt good to have an in-joke that none of the rest of them understood. Nerd power indeed.

The food arrived as another singer unfortunately butchered the Bay City Rollers’ “Saturday Night”, and he hungrily tucked into the burger, dripping with grease in just the right way. “Well,” Garcia drawled, sliding down off his chair, which barely took any effort with as long as his legs were. “I’ll lead off. Never ask anyone to do something you won’t do yourself, huh?”

“Is that your life philosophy?” Lucy asked. Connor noticed her stealing a fry from his plate, and putting a few of her own sweet potato fries over there.

“Very valid for karaoke as well as field ops.” He pointed a finger at her, glowering fiercely. “That _doesn’t_ count. It’s a general reference. Just like we wouldn’t call you out for geeking out about the history of something.” 

Nibbling the fry, Lucy shrugged. “Fine, I’ll allow it.” Wyatt rolled his eyes and flung out a hand as if to say, _of course you will, it’s him_.

He loped up to Keener, and gave his name. She typed into her laptop, leaned forward and announced. “Garcia here gets...‘Don’t Stop Me Now’ by Queen.” 

Surprising all of them, clearly including Lucy from the way she leaned on an elbow and studied him as he sang, he had a good baritone voice. Connor was less surprised that given his flair for the dramatic, he didn’t stand there simply clutching the microphone and awkwardly singing into it--nobody could own a stage quite like Freddie Mercury, but he clearly got into it. Jiya’s chortle at the line about being a “sex machine” and Lucy’s resulting awkward grin and blush made him smile too. At the end, Garcia collected his poker chip as a voucher for a beer and headed back to the table. 

“Musical theater?” Connor guessed, as he sat back down and reached for his burger again, and Jiya headed up.

He shook his head. “I left school at fifteen, and musicals didn’t exactly make it to Yugoslavia’s secondary schools the same way they did in America and the UK--I would have had to go to an art secondary school for that. Though yes, I was involved in drama for a year or so. Played Macbeth in the play of the same name.”

“Thank you for not using the name. Directly, anyway. Also, thank you for not butchering a Queen song.” 

“They were one of my favorite bands growing up.” He grinned at Lucy, in some private in-joke. “I decided when I was thirteen that I wanted to grow up to be Freddie Mercury.” He’d never had the conversation with this Garcia, but yes, he could imagine something so essential as his sexuality hadn’t changed. A bisexual teenager with a flair for drama and a rebellious streak--yes, Freddie Mercury would have been the perfect idol. He’d done that for Connor too, albeit when he was a bit older, because he’d had his own struggles with accepting his own pansexuality. Struggled with it even recently, given the need to conform to the playboy billionaire stereotype, chasing women, keeping most of his relationships with men quieter, well aware of how much of Mason Industries’ success depended on reliable funding and exactly how repressed and conservative some of those sources could be. 

“I saw them in concert. Wembley, ‘86.” Queen at the height of their fame, and at one of their most famous events. He could feel the sheer electric energy of it still, even in memory.

“Ah, you lucky bastard.” He glanced at Lucy. “Don’t suppose we could borrow the Lifeboat?”

She smiled, a little wistfully. “She’s backed off a lot, but I doubt Denise will let us take timeline joyrides to go to concerts.”

“Oh, c’mon.” Garcia leaned an elbow on the table and turned to her, giving her one of those cheeky dimpled smiles. “I’ll take you to a John Denver concert.”

“John Denver?” Wyatt asked.

Lucy stared at him as if daring him to ask that again in that precise tone of disbelief and condescension. Connor suspected if he did, he might end up dismembered in a dumpster, and that Garcia would cheerfully help besides. “John Denver is amazing.” 

Wyatt put his hands up in a gesture of surrender, and hastily changed the subject. “Uh, hey, I don’t see Connor arguing against it, and he technically owns the thing, not Denise, right?”

“Well, you all know I’m a patron of the arts,” he deadpanned, as Jiya began to sing Stevie Nicks’ “Landslide”. Her voice was perfectly decent, but mostly he saw how she put her whole heart into it, as she did with everything. He’d seen her at the scholarship interviews in Lansing and given her the help to get through Carnegie Mellon for a reason, just the same as he’d helped Rufus get through MIT. _Well time makes you bolder, even children get older, I’m gettin’ older too._ They’d grown up, both of them, from the children they’d been. They’d helped him build the Lifeboat and the Mothership, ended up caught in this whole mess, found each other, lost each other. Jiya had grown up so much in her time away in the 19th century too. “However, even I don’t want to get on Denise Christopher’s bad side.” 

He said it glibly, but the memory of being arrested, shamed publicly, still struck a raw nerve. He’d hit rock bottom already, or so he’d thought, but she’d found one more humiliation to inflict upon him, one more bit of agency to take away. He’d been as much a prisoner in that damn bunker initially as Garcia must have been in actual prison, or Lucy in her mother’s captivity. 

To be fair, Denise had changed too. He’d learned to forgive her for that. But at that time it was one more loss he couldn’t take, and she would offer him nothing but keeping the liquor cabinet stocked, so he’d taken fair advantage of that. More than he ought sometimes, figuring Jiya could hold down the fort out on the mission control floor, and who the hell needed Connor Mason anyway? 

But it seemed they had, in the end. Needed him on the Robert Johnson mission, and it still filled him with wonder and awe to have met the man, to have actually convinced him to record those songs. Every time he saw “Lando Calrissian” on the back of that album cover, it soothed something in his soul. Not a stroke to the ego, more a gentle hand smoothing away some of the pain. He’d felt so long like a ridiculous buffoon, the crackpot who’d unquestioningly taken a sinister cult’s money in order to build a time machine that got stolen initially either by Rittenhouse or Garcia Flynn, and ended up with Rittenhouse, and put Rufus in danger to the point he finally got killed. Caught in a web of his own fear and stupidity, and bringing Rittenhouse right into the heart of his business, where they’d been able to plant the bomb. He’d thought of nothing but the joy of discovery, the purity of creating something impossible, bringing it from the ether of dreams into tangible reality. But it felt like all the time machine had done was get people killed. 

But with Robert Johnson, with his encouraging Sessue Hayakawa, with the support he’d given the missions even from the console--perhaps he’d done something good with the Lifeboat. Whether that made up for the rest, he couldn’t say.

Jiya came back and sat down, brushing her hair back off her shoulders and into a ponytail, reaching for her beer. After a few more singers, and finishing her meal, Lucy headed up. “So, MCU marathon starting tomorrow night?” Jiya asked.

Garcia, mouth full of cheeseburger, just nodded, though Connor saw how his eyes were on Lucy. He couldn’t help a whoop of laughter himself as Lucy’s song ended up being John Denver’s “Rocky Mountain High.”

“Must be fate, Wyatt,” Garcia told Wyatt with a chuckle.

Wyatt rolled his eyes, but he was smiling all the same. “Sure, sure, so did she slip that DJ five bucks or what? At least she’s a great singer.” 

When he went to go head to the bathroom, maybe legitimately, maybe to avoid the song, Garcia lowered his voice and told them, smirking like a cat up to its whiskers in cream. “I may have told the DJ that if possible, Lucy desperately needed to defend the honor of John Denver.”

Connor couldn’t restrain his own snort of laughter. “Devious.”

“Sound tactics,” Garcia argued, sitting back in his chair with a self-satisfied look. Though he shut up and his attention was entirely on Lucy as she began to sing. Wyatt had been right--she had an excellent voice, hitting even the high notes with relative ease, and Connor could see her initial nerves giving way to the music quickly enough.

He caught the small, private smile between Lucy and Garcia as she came back, the way they looked at each other like for that moment nobody else was in the room. Envied them that, to be honest. He’d never quite found that magic with anyone. He was fairly sure that Wyatt, coming back from the bathroom, saw it as well, though he swerved into an awkward, “Might as well get it over with, huh?”

The expression on his face when he ended up with ABBA’s “Fernando” was priceless, but to his credit, he soldiered through it, not too terribly off key, though obviously self-conscious, took his drink chip with an awkward nod, and headed back to the table. “Connor,” Jiya said, crooking a finger at him. “Your turn.”

“Really now? Jiya, you heard me sing at the company Christmas party when I had too much eggnog. I’m an _enthusiast_ of the arts, not one myself.” His musical ear was superb. His voice unfortunately wasn’t. He was fairly certain he’d found notes that didn’t even exist on the musical scale. 

“Oh come on, I got through it,” Wyatt said, shaking his head. “Team solidarity, buddy.”

“What was that about buying a round of drinks if I don’t sing?”

“Oh, no,” Wyatt said, shaking his head, a mischievous light in his blue eyes. “Lucy, proposed rule change? The ‘buying the drinks’ clause for not singing gets revoked.”

Lucy took on a pose of exaggerated thought, chin cupped in her hand. “Approved,” she replied. “Look, Connor, we got you in the Lifeboat and you had a great time. Just go up and sing. You know we’re here for you. It doesn’t matter how good or not your voice is. It’ll be fun.”

“I don’t know, what about people seeing Connor Mason poised to make a jackass of himself yet again, and then suddenly it’s all over YouTube and social media?” He’d barely managed to stitch together some shreds of dignity since being dragged off that stage by the police at Denise’s behest.

“Valid,” Jiya acknowledged.

Wyatt shrugged. “Give another name. Problem solved.”

Sighing, he saw he couldn’t escape it. Perhaps, yes, wanting at least in part to not worry so much about being a fool, not worry about the weight of being Connor Mason, and simply have fun with this family that so improbably had chosen him, he headed up. He gave his middle name: Joseph. Prayed to any benevolent being that might exist that he got something easy rather than something by Queen. Apparently something out there smiled back at him for the plea, because it turned out to be Neil Diamond’s “Cracklin’ Rosie”.

He expected pitying pats on the back as he came back, but Garcia raised a glass in salute, and Jiya gave him a wink. The warm feeling spread in his chest, chasing back a bit more of the shadow. They’d come out that night intending to try to forget, to be normal, if only for a little while, and it seemed like they succeeded. Piling back in the SUV, Garcia took the keys and drove home, all of them in the glow of a good mood enough to sing along to the radio, chuckling as he felt Jiya doing impromptu drums on the back of his seat. 

He couldn’t even remember the song as he got undressed for bed, but he’d remember the feeling. It had been so long since they all let go like that, probably since Robert Johnson’s recording session, and they’d come back like this, laughing and happy. The expected stab of guilt at enjoying himself without Rufus there didn’t hit. They’d get Rufus back, and they’d drag him out for silly karaoke sessions too, and they’d work obsessively towards fixing the Lifeboat--they were reviewing the Lifeline plans now, and he estimated only another couple of weeks at most to get all the components and craft them. This would be slower work because it was unfamiliar, so he insisted on triple-checking everything. But they’d get there. They’d keep going, but Rufus wouldn’t want their lives to entire stop, existing in complete misery, in the interim. If he’d known Rufus Rashad Carlin at all, he’d known how big the man’s heart was.

He slept well, and the shot of happiness into the whole thing seemed to carry them all through breakfast, Wyatt whistling as he loaded the dishwasher because it was his day, through target and combat practice, through the history and culture lessons, through pilot sessions where even Wyatt was making vast strides. He’d trust Lucy as an emergency pilot now, and Garcia was close, with Wyatt not too far back now.

They were heading out to the metal hangar out back, a new installation hung all over with government historic trust signs, ready to start the work on the Lifeboat for the day. First step would be reviewing the Lifeline schematics. Not for the first time, he wished the future versions of Wyatt and Lucy could have simply left their Lifeboat and taken the other, because it would have spared all these months of replacing everything and then doing this upgrade so cautiously. But then, these months had helped forge them into something better and stronger than they’d been immediately after Rufus’ loss. It wasn’t only working on the Lifeboat together--it was everything. Confronting all their screw ups, throwing all their different strengths into training each other. If they’d rushed into saving Rufus immediately, they might well have failed.

The alarm sounded right as he spread out the schematic on a worktable. “Never mind,” he said with a sigh, heading for the console. “January 20th, 1889--”

“You’d better not say ‘San Francisco’, Connor,” Jiya told him, her tone somehow both stern and somewhat strangled, voice right behind him as she peered around him. He understood. Months after had Rufus died, so what would Rittenhouse be doing there except somehow rubbing salt in the wound? 

“No. Chicago.”

“Oh, things always go _so well_ in Chicago,” Wyatt muttered. “The whole Lucy kidnapping with bonus serial killer, and then Capone--”

“You know I’m sorry,” Garcia shot back at him. “You want to stand here rehashing old history--no pun intended--or do you want to worry about the mission, hm?”

“It wasn’t aimed at you for once. No need to take it so personally.”

Garcia gave a pointed eyeroll, and a dramatic shrug. “Pot, kettle?”

“Oh, shut up,” Wyatt grumbled.

“Lucy?” Connor asked, looking at her.

She hesitated. “The 1888 Republican National Convention was in Chicago that year, but it was months earlier.”

Jiya acknowledged, “It was. We heard about it even in San Francisco, because Frederick Douglass spoke there. No kidding: in 1888, there was a black man giving a keynote speech and even put on the ballot at the Republican National Convention. Things, ah, definitely changed with the Republicans within the next hundred years.”

“We’ll get to discussing all the failures of Reconstruction tomorrow.” Lucy shook her head. “I don’t have anything right now. It seems like Emma’s going after people before big events happen, rather than targeting a pivotal event.”

“Makes sense. She’s hoping by taking them out she can prevent the event itself, rather than us getting someone to step into their shoes right in the moment. She wasn’t planning on someone like Mileva Marić. And H.H. Holmes already was in Chicago by 1888, but I’m going to guess Emma’s not targeting him.” Garcia gave a darkly self-deprecating smile. “She’d think it’s beneath her to follow directly in my footsteps.”

“Garcia,” Lucy said, her tone full of warning. He sighed, and nodded. She continued without missing a beat, “So...it’s becoming more guesswork to figure her out. Frederick Douglass would have left town already. If it’s someone famous visiting town for only a few days, look, I’m good at history, but I’m not a record of everyone’s calendar for the past five hundred years. And if she wanted to mess with us, and get numerous big targets, I’d think she’d hit the World’s Fair in 1893 too. She’d have that ability since she was still in 1882 Missouri when that mission happened.”

“Give me a minute to trance while you get the rest ready,” Jiya said. “I won’t have long, so I’m not sure how much I’ll dig up, but let’s go for it. We’re gonna want to find some clothes on this mission, because my dress from the Bison Horn isn’t exactly everyday wear for just strolling around in 1888, Garcia’s stuff has bullet holes, and, well...all of us have...bloodstains.” She said it without flinching.

By this point, Connor noticed the routine was calm, not rushed. The sense of urgency was still there, but the hectic, flustered air he’d seen in the Lifeboat team in the early days had long since evaporated, and they moved smoothly. Wyatt and Garcia went to get the guns loaded and prepared, Jiya went to time-trance, and Lucy went to make one last Google pass to try to get more information and to grab some petty cash from Denise’s supply of it from all different eras.

Denise would be finding her knitting, he suspected, and as for him, he climbed into the Lifeboat to program the jump. Jiya was perfectly capable of programming it herself, yes, but it gave him something to do, some small thing that made him feel like he was contributing to getting them there safely and helping the mission. After they left, all of that was out of his hands, and all he could do was sit there with Denise, and hope they would be OK, and this time, they would once again all come back alive.

~~~~~~~~~~

Stretched out on her bed, Jessica looked down at the tablet in her hands, reading about the studios in the 1910s and 1920s. Not as much about Adolph Zukor given his life had been cut very short, but she could read about his contemporaries, and the men who’d stepped in to fill his shoes. Shysters, Emma had called them, corrupt and unscrupulous and peddling crap pandering to the worst of peoples’ impulses.

Maybe. But they’d also been mostly immigrants and Jews, and she couldn’t help but think there was something uncomfortable about them being shoved out by Will Hayes and his ilk, and by Rittenhouse’s plans. Wasn’t that how it started in Nazi Germany? _What you have to add to this country is nothing. In fact, your kind are making us worse. We have to push you out, block you from things. Get rid of your filth. Eventually we confine you. Then we ship you away, and then finally, we kill you and get rid of you totally._

That was extreme. It wasn’t like Rittenhouse was pursuing a second Holocaust. But flipping through Wikipedia, heck yes, many of those stars had been insanely out of control with the booze and drugs and sex and general craziness, but those films had talked about real things like the struggles of poor people, like an opiate addiction crisis, like alcoholism, like women the world gave no real options except to depend on a man until he dropped them on their ass. Some things hadn’t changed at all in a century, had they? And they’d made those movies before “decency” said they couldn’t, and it all just got swept under the rug again.

Zukor had been corrupt. But he’d also presumably fought for the right for people to show those things rather than painting everything as candy-coated wholesomeness. Once that breach was there, she couldn’t spackle it over anymore, and pretend everything was fine.

Damn Wyatt for making her doubt. No, that wasn’t right either. She’d started to have doubts even in the bunker, and she hadn’t been able to go through with killing them all. She’d seen no other choice and no other way in the end, but the kernel of doubt existed, and the way he’d nudged it in Hollywood in 1918, she couldn’t help but start to think.

But she knew better than to ask questions. Emma could talk her away around things. So she’d turned to one way things got better in a hundred years: the Internet. Started reading things for herself, and it was a rabbit hole, and sometimes she fell asleep at night even as she was reading because six and a half months in, the pregnancy still made her more easily tired.

She’d been told things since she was a child. By her parents, by Carol, by Wyatt, by Wyatt’s superiors, by the media, by the bunker gang, by Rittenhouse, by Emma. She’d grown tired of being told what to think, being told she didn’t need to worry. 

Who could she trust at this point? Wyatt had lied to her. But Emma had lied too. The deeper she dug, the more things fell apart. Wouldn’t killing Zenger have maybe stifled the Revolutionary War, without having the right to protest established? Wouldn’t killing Lincoln have kept slavery alive, since it seemed wouldn’t have ended without someone violently uprooting the system? Wouldn’t taking control of Paramount been just bringing that candy-coated lie to the screen even earlier? She’d started to question, and eventually, painful as it was, she looked from the very recent past to things a little further back. 

What, honestly, was Rittenhouse going to accomplish? They’d talked a good game about setting the ship upright again, about providing certainty, decisiveness, getting away from the paralyzing inaction of everyone demanding their particular opinion and feelings be counted as so incredibly important.

Carol telling her, aged seventeen, with that cool academic condescension: _Most people only want to feel safe and secure. They don’t need or want to realize how much goes into keeping everything running._

Emma’s impatient explanation when she’d asked what they were hoping to accomplish with this new Rittenhouse regime: _Get the right people in charge. People don’t really **want** the responsibility of thinking for themselves. They want someone smart enough to handle the job doing the thinking for them._

Wyatt’s crooked grin, putting an arm around her shoulders: _Ah, don’t worry about a thing, baby, you’ve just gotta trust me._

But honestly, wasn’t everyone supposed to be equal? Wasn’t that whole “just let people protect you from making decisions because you can’t handle it” the quasi-feudal bullshit America had rejected? The chauvinistic crap that she’d come to hate in Wyatt? 

Maybe Emma replaced the aristocracy of bloodline with some notion of the smart and the strong who’d earned their way to the top, but what happened to those that weren’t so smart and strong? The harder she looked at it, the more it looked like Emma held them in as much contempt as Carol and Nicholas had the people who hadn’t been born to the right families. 

_White trash. West Texas hillbilly. Trailer park queen._ She’d heard all that growing up. She was a thirty-five-year-old bartender with a high school diploma. Despite Emma’s protests of _you can be more, you should be more_ , and maybe she wanted and hungered to learn and experience more, did she deserve any less if she hadn’t? What if she’d been happy in El Cruce, living that life and its familiar rhythms, content in the comfort of home and family and a simple life, being kind to neighbors and people in need, raising her own kids to be good citizens of the world? Would she have deserved anything less as a person if she had been happy with that? Or even if she’d been happy as a San Francisco bartender? 

The more she looked at it from the outside, according to Rittenhouse: yes. Yes, she would have deserved less. And it turned her stomach to acknowledge it. 

It all started to fall apart from there. What were they even doing? How had she let them justify the things they did as right and just? If she needed more evidence, she’d had to ignore a piece of it right in front of her nose those months she’d spent in the bunker.

She’d heard from Rittenhouse what a terrifying killing machine Flynn had become, how scared they actually were that his one-man vendetta would succeed because of how formidably he’d planned it. If she was going to kill anyone in that bunker, they’d told her unequivocally, _Make sure Garcia Flynn dies first. We can’t risk him surviving again._ She’d seen him walking around the bunker, full of sharp edges and snarky comments. But in the unguarded moments, she’d seen the missing pieces in him, the weariness, the sorrow behind the anger, the way he looked at Lucy with something almost like despair. She’d learned to read people too well as a bartender, so she saw it all.

He was Rittenhouse’s most dangerous enemy, driven and angry and incredibly bright. He was also exhausted, guilt-ridden, and grieving. He was like that, on both accounts, because they’d killed his wife and his daughter, and failed to kill him. And if she had to ask one question about the people she’d sworn her allegiance to, it had to be: what kind of organization not only attempted to kill the man who apparently poked his nose somewhere too risky in order to protect itself, but callously and coolly murdered his family to boot? What possible justification could there be for that? The Flynns hadn’t been involved in any way, but Ben Cahill ordered them killed all the same. He’d never admitted whether he genuinely intended Flynn dead himself, or if he meant the murdered family to serve as the message to back off. Either way, it sounded a hell of a lot more like drug cartel tactics than a charitable organization.

She hadn’t asked that question, because she hadn’t wanted to face the pointed truth of it. But she’d opened the door, and stepped through, and she hated herself. Because now everything unraveled when she looked at it, and the doubt was there, because everything could be dark and cynical rather than simple and certain, and she couldn’t know for sure.

She had been murdered in 2012. She accepted that fact, because otherwise, Wyatt and all the rest were pulling some insanely elaborate con on her. Rittenhouse had saved her. They wanted her alive, and with Wyatt as an enemy, she didn’t think it was a selfless deed. They could have hoped that bringing her back would be enough to make him quit the mission, thank his lucky stars, and they’d go drive off into the sunset to live their blissful second chance. 

But they hadn’t. They’d saved Kevin. They’d saved her brother’s life, and she’d been so grateful, and they’d counted on that, hadn’t they? Had they been watching her as she grew up, waiting to see what she was like, who she’d become, and exactly how useful she could be? Saw a smart girl hungry to do more than live her life in El Cruce as tornado bait, and swooped in like vultures. Carol had given her a purpose, or so she’d thought. No, she’d been given purpose. But not her own purpose, because it was Rittenhouse’s alone. 

If they could murder Lorena and Iris Flynn for nothing, they could groom her to be their assassin only because they knew she would marry Wyatt Sherwin Logan, that the marriage would hit the skids enough for them to move in and reassure her, and that she’d be their best chance to infiltrate the enemy camp and strike. 

She’d been just another tool to them. She doubted she was much more than that to Emma. Maybe the best tool, the sharpest, because Emma relied on her more than she did the kids. But she’d seen how little Emma drew her into the confidences and the planning. She might be the lieutenant, but she wasn’t a partner. She’d seen them at work in the bunker. They all--well, OK, Flynn maybe excepted--had been part of the planning, the discussion.

She closed the cover of the tablet, lying there, resting her hand on her stomach. Feeling the tumbling and twisting of the baby beneath her hand. The last ultrasound, two weeks ago, told her that she’d have a daughter. The little girl she’d wanted so much was a reality. She’d lain there on the table, watching the ripples and shadows on the screen, seeing a tiny hand. Wyatt hadn’t been there, and she only realized afterwards, almost in tears, how much she wished he had been. Not as her husband, not exactly, but because this baby was a part of him too, and God, she at least trusted Wyatt with the kid more than she trusted Emma at this point.

She tapped her stomach in response to another kick. _I need to get out. I need to get you somewhere safe._ But where was there to go? Wyatt said he’d take her back, but that came with its own set of shackles. Maybe literal ones, because she’d loved him, possibly still loved him, but he could be an oblivious idiot to things he didn’t want to see. Chances were if she went over to them, they wouldn’t have a house and a white picket fence and a beautiful daughter, and that idyllic dream. Chances were she’d end up in a prison cell. 

She’d seen clearly enough they’d let Flynn loose from prison only because they needed him, not because they wanted him there. He knew it too. She’d seen it in the instinctive retreats he made the moment he stopped making a big show of dramatic nonchalance, how he didn’t force his opinion into their conversations. He was their tool. They probably didn’t need another, and she was no soldier like him. Besides, he hadn’t helped get one of their own killed, he hadn’t sneaked in and lied like she had.

If she stayed here...at least in a prison cell she’d live. Her baby girl would live. Here? She had to wonder what her life expectancy was in Rittenhouse. Right now, Emma had use for her. Though she’d had use for Luke and Matt and Tammi too, and that use was to send them on missions where they all ended up dead. If someone had gone to 1918 Hollywood instead of Emma wanting to handle it herself, they’d probably have died too, or else been abandoned there to live out the rest of their life as Zukor’s replacement. Rittenhouse wasn’t exactly running a deep bench at this point. Emma had dismissed the idea of recruiting, of trying to hook their organization into someone with bigger numbers. “I have enough. I have people who are competent and smart and they’ll be able to do the job. Hell, look at what one person can do. Look what I managed. Look what you managed. That’s worth more than hundreds of mindless hangers-on like Rittenhouse used to have. All that happened was trimming off the dead wood.” _I_ , she’d said, not _we_. Somehow, thinking back, that seemed significant.

Being honest, Rittenhouse had a handful of people who were young, hungry to matter, eager to make their mark, either without family or having grown beyond the confines of their roots. They reminded her painfully of herself, so it was harder to talk to them sometimes. Not to mention they tended to treat the mid-thirties pregnant lady as the weird awkward aunt, whereas Emma, even pregnant herself, got the sort of fear and worship of being the unquestioned leader. Yet even with so few people, Emma spent their lives as easily as dealing out cards. And Emma wouldn’t tell her the game plan, of course. But she’d caught hints of what some of the rest were training on when she talked with them: Jake was studying the French and Indian War, and Hannah was working on Portuguese, of all things. There were plans in the works, and she had the sinking feeling if Emma had her way, those kids either wouldn’t live to see twenty-five, or they’d celebrate that birthday somewhere far away in the past.

Sometimes she worried she was only staying useful to Emma right now because of the skills Rittenhouse had trained her in, to be the mole and spy and eventual assassin, plus perhaps the child she carried. Much as Emma supposedly didn’t buy into the bloodlines, she had big plans for both their children. Apparently Rittenhouse heritage mattered to her when it was her own kid, and she was the one on top rather than staring up at Carol Preston in frustration. There would come a day she wouldn’t be useful anymore, and if the choice was between death at Emma’s hands--whether directly or on a mission she’d ordered--or being locked up by Denise Christopher, she wasn’t sure that was the factor that held the most sway. That left the choice between Wyatt and Emma, and which she trusted more with the control over her daughter’s life and future. Because if she went to prison, Wyatt would certainly have custody, whether she liked it or not. Easy choice. Not that Wyatt was outstanding, given he’d been a crappy husband, and she couldn’t help the fear that as much as he hated his father, he’d turn out like him with his own child. But at least he wouldn’t raise her as part of this crazy scheme.

If there was another way, she couldn’t see it. So the lesser of two evils it was. “I’ve got you, Dani,” she murmured. “I’m here. It’s gonna be OK.” They’d talked about naming a kid, long ago, and they’d agreed to name a daughter “Danielle”. Rolling to sit up, a much harder task now given the bulk of her belly, she slipped on her sneakers and headed downstairs in the farmhouse, mind made up. 

She headed out to the silo next. She’d been hiding for too long, trying to avoid Emma and the nagging, growing doubts and fears, lying about not feeling well. She had to move beyond that now, give no inkling of what was going on in her head. She’d lied to Wyatt and the rest of them so well that they’d had no clue. She could lie to a pack of impressionable kids barely out of college, and a woman who _wanted_ to see a compliant, overeager subordinate so desperate for validation and belonging. Stepping in, she saw Darla sitting with Hannah, Jake, and Lee, Emma busy with the something in the Mothership. She headed up to Emma, seeing the growing bump of her own stomach beneath the tank top. “How’s it going?” she asked, reaching for the ponytail holder on her wrist, and pulling her hair back. The breeze immediately started to dry the sweat on the naep of her neck, which was a relief. September in Kansas was still brutal, and she was glad that she likely wouldn’t be here for winter, one way or another.

“Well, well, look who’s back,” Emma answered with a smile, twirling the wrench with a neat flick of her wrist, bending down to put it back in the toolbox. “How are you feeling?”

Something in the question, kindly meant as it seemed, made her blood run cold. It was like she’d taken off the rose colored glasses. Now all she could do was wonder if any moment of kindness from Emma had ever been genuine, or if it was all calculated to make Jessica crave more of that faux big sister act. “Better.” She smiled sheepishly. “Second trimester was great after how rough the first one was, but apparently third, jeez, the floodgates open and your hormones go totally insane. Better be prepared for that yourself.”

“You up for a mission tomorrow?”

Perfect. She’d been thinking of how she could get in touch with them, how she could turn herself in. It wasn’t like she could steal a car, because unfortunately, they had no damn idea where Wyatt and the others slept. Not in the bunker, but beyond that, no idea. She’d told Emma that the Lifeboat had a tracker, and Jiya had apparently made it, but Emma’s engineering skills didn’t run in their direction. And nobody else on their team could do it either, so they were still running blind. She could have called Wyatt, but would he have believed her over the phone? No, this would work. The Mothership would go, and the Lifeboat would follow, and she could hopefully give Emma the slip long enough to find them. But she played it casual. “Am I gonna be too obvious and stick out?” She made a face, patting her stomach. “No pun intended. But you did say pregnant women basically locked themselves at home after a certain point.”

“You can get away with it 1888 if we get you the right cut on the skirts.”

She lowered her voice. “None of the kids can do it?”

“It’s a mission none of them are ready and trained for.” She shrugged dismissively. “It’s one I thought up a couple weeks ago. So you and I are gonna have to take this one.” She smirked at Jessica. “You’re not afraid suddenly, are you?”

“Never say that to me. I’ve done everything so far. I played them for months, just like you did with Flynn. Never suspected a thing until I put the knife in their backs, just like you did with him.” Knowing Emma would see it as a challenge, she waited a few seconds, and then bit her lip, glancing away, the picture of the self-conscious subordinate offering up her throat. “Sorry. I mean, OK, I didn’t have to do the whole ‘twelve years in the wilderness’ thing. But I’m not scared. Just wondering if on one of these missions they decide to take you or me out.”

“They won’t.”

“You sure about that?”

“This is why we stick to crowds and places that we know they’re under expectations of behaving, Jessica. They’re not going to start a firefight in public, or gun us down in front of that many witnesses. Besides, Wyatt’s got his head up his ass thinking you’re his sweet little damsel in distress who needs rescuing. Lucy has more guts than I thought, but she’ll fold under pressure, like she always does. Jiya’s probably angry about Rufus, but she’s not a killer. And Flynn used to have the nerve, but at heart, he’s just a sad superstitious little Catholic boy who worries too much about being damned by a non-existent God. Plus he’s busy being a _good boy_ for Princess Lucy’s approval anyway. He could have killed me in 1919. Definitely wanted to do it. Didn’t have the nerve anymore.” 

She could tell Emma plenty about them, and how formidable they could be, but she didn’t. _And your flaw is you have to underestimate everyone around you so you can be that much smarter and better than them._ “They all follow Lucy’s lead, and you’re right, she doesn’t have the guts to do the hard thing.” If “the hard thing” meant only killing without a qualm. She’d told Wyatt to go back to Jessica, to repair his marriage. It had to be humiliating as hell for Lucy to come to her, and say she’d accepted being second best, that she’d given him up. But she’d done it. Too bad Wyatt hadn’t had the guts himself to listen to her. “So what are you trying to do, anyway?”

“Trying to upgrade the battery. If we can’t get plutonium--and I haven’t given up on that, it’s just gonna be finding the right place and time to get it--I can at least tweak it so we’re not as much at the mercy of the jumps.”

“Well, you know I can turn a wrench, so tell me what to do.” 

The next morning, she got dressed for the mission, feeling a bit like donning armor. The royal blue dress was actually a separate bodice and skirt, the overlap of which hid her stomach somewhat to begin, and all the flounces and ruffles and silver beaded trim, as well as the heavy coat for January weather, helped as a distraction too. She glanced at herself in the mirror, pinning back her hair. She looked chunky, but maybe that could be excused as being overly fond of cake. The looseness of the dress could be chalked up to having a lousy seamstress, or buying the dress secondhand. She would be unfashionable, but not notably pregnant.

Emma piloted, as usual. Her own dress covered her four month belly more easily than Jessica’s, which Jessica eyed with some envy at this point, feeling like she'd forgotten what it was like to not be big and bulky and clumsy. Making the jump, listening to Emma describe the plan, she tried to memorize every detail possible.

Walking down the streets of Chicago, glad for the warm coat in the raw autumn wind, she couldn’t help but ask questions. “Looks like lots of new construction here compared to New York or the like?” So many clean and fresh looking buildings, streets seeming new too.

Say what she could against Emma, the woman did do her homework about the history. “Lots of the city burned to the ground in 1871 in the Great Chicago Fire. They’re still building and growing, and they take a lot of pride in keeping things looking shiny and new. They actually kind of treated the 1893 World’s Fair as this big coming out party of the revitalized Chicago.”

She nodded at that. “You can almost feel it. There’s so much...energy in the city.” A bustling purpose and industriousness. “What’s going on?” Up ahead the picket signs were out, white paper with bold letters about the 40 hour week, fair pay, and unions.

“Labor protest. They’ve had to be a bit more careful since the Haymarket Riot three years ago--they hanged the leaders of that one because of a bomb getting thrown. But they still keep at it.” Emma nodded to a half-dozen uniformed police standing nearby, eyeing the protestors suspiciously. “Looks like the cops have got it under control.”

Then with a shout of “Don’t forget the cause, lads!”, and an answering chant of “Haymarket Eight!”, the mood shifted like stormy weather. The calm wavered and shattered, and as the skirmish began, the police advancing with their nightsticks drawn, she ducked behind one of the protestors, making it look as though she’d been cut off by him from Emma. This was her chance to slip away, and she took it. If Emma found her before she found the Lifeboat team, she could always just blame the crowd and getting swept away. 

If she knew them, they’d be here already in Chicago, but it was a big city, and of course they didn’t know where to go. Too bad cell phones didn’t work now.

She got lucky about five minutes later. Flynn was absurdly tall, and it made him easier to spot in a crowd, guiding himself and Lucy towards the edge of the mess. No sign of Wyatt, but that made things easier. She’d rather not have to do this with him, get all the pressure put on her by him to come back, to fix the marriage, to be his wife again. Facing Jiya’s rage too probably would have been harder, and less likely to guarantee her survival. Lucy, like it or not, was her best chance.

Glancing around, she didn’t see Emma nearby, but lingered, pointedly looking around as if searching for Emma, making certain Lucy saw her. Walking away, not running because that might make it look like she was leading them into a trap, she headed for an alley, wanting to get out of sight. Though like Emma said, this was the exact situation that could end up handing them a golden opportunity to shoot her without witnesses. Heart pounding, she reached for the pistol in her reticule. Hopefully she could get Lucy talking before Flynn shot her dead, but it could be a near run thing.

Three quarters of the way down the alley, she turned, pistol in hand but at her side, ready to fight if need be. Then she heard the quiet _click_ of a safety behind her. “Easy now. Don’t do anything stupid. You’re a damn good spy, Jessica,” Flynn said calmly. “But when you’re trying to set up a corridor ambush, you really need to make sure before you turn around that there’s not a cross alley where your enemy can flank you. Drop the gun, and we’ll talk.” 

She dropped the pistol, and heard the dull _thud_ of it hitting the hard-packed dirt. She wasn’t going to die here in this alley. _I’ve got this, kiddo._ She took a deep breath, heart pounding in fear, but feeling the calm settle over her anyway. She’d made her choice and she’d see it through. But it wouldn’t do to seem too desperate. She'd handed her fate entirely over to other people for too long. This time, she was going to argue for herself, and for her daughter. “All right. Let’s talk.”


	18. 3x05: Addams Family Values (Lucy: Chicago, Illinois, January 1889)

They dropped into a Chicago winter afternoon, grey and overcast, in the outskirts of the still-growing city, air heavy with the promise of more snow than the foot or so already on the ground. They could hardly drop the Lifeboat in the middle of a bustling metropolis, especially without the right clothes. She’d learned enough about piloting the Lifeboat to be certain that they couldn’t simply tell it to land on a roof or something, that unless they wanted to take the time to look up occupancy records they couldn’t be sure a place was empty in that given year. Plus with how cramped and narrow the buildings could be in the past, with their luck they’d pop into someone’s parlor right while they were sitting down to afternoon social hours, and destroy their home to boot.

Not to mention dropping into the city without the right clothes _and_ wandering around asking weird questions would likely end with a trip to the police station, the asylum, or both. 

So they landed outside Englewood, still a quiet suburb not yet swallowed up by the city. Busy robbing washlines, so scarce in winter, and pulling their usual clothing shop larceny, she’d spared a glance for the foreboding three-story structure even now being constructed on the corner of Wallace and 63rd Streets, taking up the whole block. She saw Garcia gazing there as well, then turning away, mouth twisted in an awkward grimace. H.H. Holmes would get his own reckoning, even in this altered timeline. But the impulse was there to go bomb the hell out of the thing right now, destroy it as an abomination, shoot him dead, before he could seriously get started on his murder spree. 

She turned away herself, straightening her spine, pulling her coat a little closer around her with a shiver that had little to do with the raw January air. “Let’s go,” she said, as much to command herself as to the rest of them. Avoiding the thin layer of ice freezing on the streets in the chill air, they caught a ride on the horse-drawn streetcar towards the center of town. As usual, her mind was racing trying to figure out the plan. The streetcar was mostly empty, because it was late afternoon on a Friday night headed to the city. Wealthier people had their own carriages to go find fun, or could pay a cab. For the working and lower middle class, they would be leaving the city, not heading towards it. Coming from their jobs in the city back to their homes, exhausted workers wanting nothing more than to get home, get their boots off, and eat a good meal in the cold weather. Some things didn’t change much, no matter the year.

And Jiya hadn’t gotten much. She’d seen some kind of ball at what looked like a fancy hotel. But she’d been frustrated, said that there was some kind of “fuzziness” to it that she wasn’t used to seeing. _It’s like getting snapshots in strobe light, rather than a movie. All I get is a couple of flashes, like I used to get before I went to 1885. I’ve given myself a hell of a headache trying to focus, and it won’t go. Something’s in flux with the timeline there, Lucy. I don’t know what to make of it, OK?_

A ball at a hotel, which meant heading downtown for certain. “I’m guessing maybe the Palmer House,” she told them. “Biggest hotel in Chicago right now. Actually one of the biggest and most sumptuous in the world right now.” They headed west on Randolph Street, avoiding the slush, snow, and horseshit in the streets, grateful that the sidewalks were kept clear of snow because of her long and heavy skirts, but rather less thrilled that they were in the era of child labor being alive and well. A lot of the shoveling of the manure from the streets was being done by young boys, nimbly dodging carriages and wagons. “Hurray for The Good Old Days,” Wyatt muttered, glancing at one boy Lucy estimated couldn’t be more than eight or so, though it was harder to tell in that outsized coat and heavy scarf.

“Labor demonstrations for limited hours, unions, restrictions on child labor and the like, are becoming a bigger thing. They started working for a forty-hour work week here in Chicago four years ago. There was a big demonstration two years ago here in Chicago on May Day--we’re coming up on Haymarket Square where it was held.”

“The papers were full of it,” Jiya said, tone turning grim. “Said anarchists threw a bomb, killed a policeman and dozens of civilians, and it turned into this mass hysteria. I swear, I never missed the Internet so much as when you could only get information with whatever bias the local paper decided to report with on anything. You never got the full story, except by reading like several different papers, and even then, you probably didn’t get everything.” 

“Someone threw a bomb, and nobody’s ever determined for sure who it was, but it probably wasn’t the primary speakers who were arrested. And the bomb killed one policeman, but most of the deaths in the crowd were from police shooting indiscriminately. They convicted eight people for it, hanged four of them. It definitely sparked both anarchist hysteria, and for the labor movement to stay alive because of them becoming more or less martyrs for the cause.” Apparently the labor movement was indeed alive and well, because a few blocks later, they ran smack dab into a demonstration in progress. From what she saw, the demonstration wasn’t turning ugly or violent, nothing aside from some pointed chants and yells. But after the Haymarket incident, obviously the trigger fingers were still twitchy, so to speak, and the police surged in readily with nightsticks drawn and manacles ready.

Lost in the crush, she caught up with Garcia easily enough, one of the tallest men in the crowd, and he managed to bull his way through things like a battleship plowing through the waves, carving them a path to the edge of the crowd. Looking around for Jiya and Wyatt, she didn’t see them, but she did spy a familiar figure, her blond hair swept up beneath a dark blue winter bonnet. “Garcia,” she said, reaching out and grabbing his sleeve.

He half-turned away from scanning the crowd. “Got her,” he said, tone. Jessica herself obviously had been separated from Emma, looking around with an air of intent searching. Then she headed out, turning into an alley, presumably to wait for Emma to get out of the crowd and find her.

“Really?” Garcia clicked his tongue in annoyance. “That’s an amateur ambush. Disappointing.”

“So what, don’t take the bait?”

He looked down at her, giving that edged smile he had when he was in the field, thriving on the challenge. “Well, I didn’t say that.” He glanced at the situation, coolly assessing. “We’ve got a tangent cross alley coming in--there.” He traced the path with his finger in the air, indicating the convergence. “If I hurry, I’ll get behind her. It’s better if I go. I’m faster to cover that distance, and it’ll be less obvious than you and your skirts running.”

In other circumstances she would have teased him for him obliquely calling her too short. Right now wasn’t the time for lightheartedness. “All right. I’ll follow Jessica.” 

He turned back after a few steps. “Keep your gun drawn the minute you’re in that alley,” he said lowly, hand squeezing her arm for a moment, seeming reluctant to let go. “Stick to the wall, find some kind of cover until I’ve got her either down or disarmed.”

She nodded, acknowledging the tactical advice. “You take out Emma if she’s there. I’ll get Jess if she won’t cooperate.” 

That was all they needed: the rest was understood, plan made. Hurrying as much as she could without outright running or calling too much attention, she reached into her coat and pulled the pistol as she entered the alley--a modern semi-automatic, all business rather than a ladylike derringer to hide daintily in a reticle. So it was a good thing the heavy coat hid the bulge of the gun in her pocket, because the form-fitting lines of most Victorian women’s clothing certainly wouldn’t. She’d changed a lot from the last time she’d been in 1888, half-clueless about using a gun. This time, if she met Emma in that alley, she wasn’t leaving alive. She already had the will the pull the trigger then. This time, thanks to Garcia and Wyatt’s training, she certainly had the skill.

She found a stack of apple crates, half-crouched behind them, ignoring her skirts dragging in a filthy dirt and ash-riddled slush puddle. Pistol at the ready, scanning for Emma anywhere nearby, she peered above them, saw Jessica turn back to face the opening of the alley, hand at her side. Garcia stepped behind her, gun raised. “Easy now. Don’t do anything stupid. You’re a damn good spy, Jessica,” he told her, calmly. Jessica didn’t even turn her head. She seemed strangely unsurprised that Garcia got the drop on her. “But when you’re trying to set up a corridor ambush, you really need to make sure before you turn around that there’s not a cross alley where your enemy can flank you. Drop the gun, and we’ll talk.”

Without a flicker of hesitation, she dropped the pistol to the ground. “All right. Let’s talk.” With that, Lucy stepped fully out into the open.  
“Is this a setup with Emma?” she asked, half-lowering her own gun, but not putting it away. It felt like this would go better without her sticking a gun in Jessica’s face. Was it really going to be this easy?

“No,” Jessica said, folding her arms across her chest. Lucy couldn’t help but notice how it pulled her coat tight across the now-visible swell of her belly. “I’m done with Rittenhouse. I was hoping to find you.”

“Harder to trust you at this point, but you know that,” Garcia told her calmly. He glanced up from watching Jessica carefully, his eyes meeting Lucy’s, looking at her with utter faith. She nodded. _I’ve got this._ “But then again, they gave me a chance. I’ll let you two talk, keep an eye out.” The _click_ of him putting the safety on somehow was audible even over the pounding of Lucy’s heart in her ears. He stooped for a moment, and picked up Jessica’s derringer, not apologizing for it. Then he was gone, pulling down the iron ladder of the fire escape with a loud screech, climbing up nimbly to the first level, then the second. The balcony of it wrapped around the corner, so she knew he’d be busy on the prowl, watching carefully for either enemies or allies. She breathed a sigh of relief at having the security of having him there for that.

Looking away from his retreat, back to Jessica, she saw the puffy shadowed dark smudges under the other woman’s eyes, and the way she seemed to sag in on herself, as if she’d been carrying the burden for far too long. As if, maybe, she’d been at war with herself. Or maybe Lucy was wrong, and Jessica was tired from the pregnancy. “I think you know that he’s right. It’s harder to trust you at this point.”

Jessica’s shoulders briefly lifted, then dipped again. “Can’t blame you for that.”

“But I’m listening. Why are you done with Rittenhouse?”

“Because I finally looked at the reality, and couldn’t hide behind the crap I’d been raised to believe.” Jessica looked squarely at her. “Just like you had to eventually face what your mom really was, right?” She felt like she’d been punched, breathing in only shakily. She still struggled with it, didn’t she? She suspected some part of her would struggle with it for the rest of her life, even if she’d accepted her mother was dead, and unlike Rufus, she was so far gone that Lucy wouldn’t try to go back and save her. Carol Preston had made her choices. She could have gone back to the woman she’d been--Lucy would have happily warned her against smoking when they got Henry and Carol together, of course she would, so she wouldn’t have had cancer. She would have lived, and been happy with Henry, and had Amy again. But she’d chosen Rittenhouse. Because Rittenhouse was blood, heritage, legacy--but not family. This Carol had sacrificed her family on that Rittenhouse altar again and again. “I believed them because they saved my brother, and told me they wanted to make me part of something great. But they could have saved me from whoever killed me, no strings, and hoped that would be enough to make Wyatt quit. Saving Kevin--that was to make my family feel like we owed them. They saved both my brother and me only because they knew I married Wyatt. Raised me for the sole purpose of taking him, and the rest of you, out. And they don’t give a damn about anyone. They didn’t before, and Emma sure as hell doesn’t. She’s sending kids barely out of college into the void. I saw how your team works. I saw how her scheme works. It’s...it’s a lot different.”

“I know.” She remembered Matt, young, naive, deluded, and dead. “So you finally saw through them.”

She nodded, still hugging herself tightly. “I feel so stupid. That I let them talk me into…but I couldn’t trust Wyatt then, and I couldn’t trust any of you, and by the time I could, it was too late, I was in too deep, and I _still_ couldn’t trust him because it was obvious he couldn’t let you go...and...”

“I kept telling him he needed to let me go. For your sake, and mine.”

Jessica held up her hands, fingers flexing in her navy blue leather gloves. “Look, I don’t blame you, OK. You thought I was dead, and when you found out I wasn’t, you immediately walked away. That’s his fault, not yours.”

She chewed her lip, debating whether she should tell Jessica about Wyatt now. But it wasn’t her place, and the last thing she needed to do was put pressure again, make Jessica feel like she owed it to Wyatt. No, best thing to do was keep it matter-of-fact and let the two of them talk about anything to do with their relationship. “He woke up, finally. I’ll say that. And it looks like you did too.”

Those brown eyes studying her were bleary and exhausted. “I woke up from a lot of delusions. I’m seeing pretty clearly right now on a lot. So it’s not like I’m imagining we all forget Rufus, and everything I did, and Wyatt and I just go on. But I don’t want to be a part of the plan to make things worse for everyone except the few people Emma decides are worthy. And honestly, I don’t want Emma anywhere _near_ my child.”

Lucy believed the vehemence in her voice at that, the spark of determined anger that suddenly lit up her face. She glanced up to see the dark-coated figure keeping watch above them, still and wary. “Garcia’s not wrong. He did...pretty awful things too, thinking he had no other choice. But he’s with us now. He chose that, and he changed.” She stepped forward, risking putting the gun away in her pocket. “You’re right. They didn’t give you a choice.” Carol hadn’t given her a choice either when she’d kidnapped Lucy. They hadn’t given Garcia a choice either, telling him _become our tool or stay locked up forever._ “But I think you need one. So if you want to leave them, leave them.” Denise might kill her for this, but she didn’t care. “But you could either come back with us, which could mean you work with us, but it could a prison cell if some things go certain ways--” She realized again how powerless she was against Denise’s mandates on that. Her protests for Garcia’s sake had been futile. She thought Denise had softened since then, grown and seen more of the shades of grey in this fight, but there was no guarantee.

“I know. I’m ready for that.”

“Or...I let you go.” It struck her that forcing Jessica to join the fight didn’t seem like much of a choice either. Garcia had at least cared passionately, his hatred for Rittenhouse driving him to want to join them, to do everything he could to take Rittenhouse down. Jessica might want to do nothing except escape. “Garcia and I never saw you, and you suddenly vanish from Rittenhouse. You live out your life in 1889, true, but for once it’s your life, your choice. If you can stand to talk to Wyatt, you probably owe him one last conversation to say goodbye, unless you’re afraid of what he’ll do. I’d offer to drop you elsewhere, and ah, elsewhen, but we’d have to explain that to Denise.” She thought about it. “I guess we could always claim a jump glitch?”

Jessica laughed in a harsh caw. “No, stuck in the 1880’s seems like poetic justice, given what Jiya ended up with thanks to me.”

“So that’s your choice.”

“I…” Jessica hesitated. “I hadn’t thought that far. I only thought as far as the prison cell, you know?” 

A warning whistle came from up above, and Garcia clambered down the ladder, dusting off the palms of his gloves after he hit the ground. He shook his head, hands up, in a _calm down_ gesture. “It’s Wyatt and Jiya. No sign of Emma.”

Jessica went pale. “She probably went ahead on the mission.” She shook her head, laughing. “God, _really_ , I shouldn’t be surprised she’s so ready to abandon my ass. She’s willing to sacrifice all of us in the end.”

“Do tell,” Garcia said, looking at her intently, as Wyatt and Jiya rounded the corner of the cross alley. “I mean, the ‘Emma is a heartless sociopath’ part I already knew, thanks, but let’s hear about the mission, mm?”

Glancing at Wyatt, suddenly looking like a cornered fox, Jessica said, “OK. I’ll give you a gesture of good faith.” Lucy couldn’t help but think of Garcia in Washington’s dining room, tearing pages from the journal and holding them out to her, voice and eyes intense and yet pleading with her as he insisted, _Here. A show of faith._ “The safehouse is at 19762 State Route 98, Manhattan, Kansas. Pale blue farmhouse. Mothership sits in the silo out back. As for the mission? We’re here to kill Jane Addams and Lucy Parsons.” She shook her head. “No, not ‘we’. Emma is. I’m not.”

Now it clicked, and she thought furiously, all the pieces falling into place. “Emma’s trying to kill off a lot of social activism in one fell swoop,” she told them. “Jane Addams is pretty much the mother of American social work. She’ll start a settlement house next year here in Chicago--Hull House. All sorts of social and educational programs for the poor derive from the example she set there. Helps found the ACLU, deeply involved with the NAACP, wins the Nobel Prize in 1931. One of the biggest social reformers and activists of the next fifty years. Lucy Parsons is a radical anarchist, an agitator for labor reform, for the homeless, for the poor, and paved the way for a lot of labor reform and union activity in the twentieth century. Her husband Albert was one of the men hanged for the Haymarket riot.” 

“Addams is at the Palmer House Hotel tonight trying to start making connections for donations for Hull House, because there’s a charity ball for African missionaries. Or maybe it was Asian?”

“I love rich Victorians’ idea of charity,” Jiya said dryly. “Ignore all the problems at home because the poor are just inferior and they deserve to live in misery, pay for missionaries to brown and black people while your country pillages the hell out of their resources, cheats and kills their people, and destroys their culture, and pat yourself on the back for being _charitable_ because at least you introduced them to Christian ‘civilization’.”

“Emma asked around already and found out: Parsons is at a labor demonstration tonight at the Eldorado Music Hall.” Jessica chewed her lip. “Killing her was supposed to be my mission.” 

She glanced over at Jiya rather than Wyatt, eyes wide and nervous. “She’s surrendering,” Lucy told Jiya. 

“You believe it?” Jiya asked her. Lucy didn’t hesitate, instead nodding.

Jiya folded her arms over her chest. “Fine. She and I need to have a chat. I suppose Wyatt does too, at that. You two should get going. Keep to the mission.”

“Palmer House?” Garcia guessed.

She gave a wry smile of acknowledgment. “That’s where Emma’s going, plus in this era, we’re going to have easier access to a posh affair than you, Jiya.” Not to mention they could play the part of a couple easily enough, even easier than before--she felt herself blush at it, hoping the pink in her cheeks already from the cold hid it. She stifled the feeling with effort, because she had to focus. “Steal some clothes, bluff our way in, do the thing. You know the routine.”

Jiya stepped away from Jessica for a moment, leaving Wyatt staring at her with a transfixed look, like his heart could barely stand this moment, breaking and hoping and raging all at once. She knew that feeling all too well. 

She sensed rather than saw Garcia turn his attention back to Jessica, filling the space Jiya had vacated for the moment. “We collect Addams, you collect Parsons, and then what?” 

“Bring them somewhere safe,” Garcia said in an undertone. “Who can you trust? Emma seems to lose interest quickly when her plans fail, so if we can get them through tonight safely, they should be all right.”

That was the hitch in the plan, and she thought furiously. “I’ve got it,” Jiya said, grinning suddenly. “A certain female Pinkerton was supposed to die in Chicago in 1866, but last I saw on the Internet, she’s alive and well in 1889, and still here in the city.” Lucy couldn’t hide her own smile, and she saw Garcia’s smile too. The three of them had done a good thing--no, Jiya had done it with her supposed spiritualist vision--and it looked like that might pay some dividends now.

“Not like we can just look Kate Warne up in the phone book,” Garcia pointed out. “Given the telephone is only a dozen years old?”

“And any municipal building with a city directory or census records is closed. It’s fine. We can each ask at a police station. They should know, especially where to find a Pinkerton agent.” She hesitated, looking at Jiya. “You’re all right handling Jessica? And being with Wyatt?” The option she’d given Jessica of remaining here might be off the table in the face of Jiya’s justifiable anger, but she couldn’t argue that. Jiya and Wyatt had the most claim here, the most injury caused by Jessica’s actions. She wanted to argue for mercy, but she had to trust them. The team had agreed that Jessica deserved that second chance to step away from Rittenhouse, and it looked like she’d made that decision for herself already. 

Jiya nodded, something stiff in the movement. “I’m not gonna kill her, if that’s what you’re asking. Or him. Do you _really_ believe she’s telling the truth?”

“Yes.”

Jiya blew out a slow breath. “Well, you were right about this one.” She nodded to Garcia, who gave an awkward smile, ducking his head slightly in embarrassed acknowledgment. “You were right to believe in all of us, really. So good enough for me.” Her gaze told Lucy _I believe in you_ , something she’d never heard from Carol, and like it did with Garcia, feeling that faith filled her with a strange warmth. “We’ll talk, we’ll deal with her, get her to help us with Parsons if we can. And we’ll meet up with you at Kate Warne’s.”

“All right. Good luck.” With that, she turned to go, because if they had to steal evening clothes and find their way to the Palmer House before Emma managed to find and extract Jane Addams from a busy party so she could kill her, there probably wasn’t that much time to waste.

She managed to get Kate Warne’s address at the nearest police station, saying she needed to consult the famous lady detective with some information about a case. Almost appalling how easy it was to get someone’s personal information in the past, without anyone, including the police themselves, questioning motives. The policeman mostly seemed relieved she didn’t want to file a report on anything. 

Stealing clothes, especially pre-1920, was almost routine to them by now, given the worship of wealth in this era meaning there were inattentive shop clerks who couldn’t even imagine of someone carrying themselves with the air of wealth stooping to stealing things. She was used to the habit of bundling up the everyday historical clothes too to stash them, hopefully retrieve them later, and be able to bring them back to 2018 to add to the wardrobe. Her burgundy dress with the velvet trim and underskirt, even with the sizable bustle on the bodice, and her winter boots, made for a neat parcel in an alleyway not too far from the Palmer House, along with Garcia’s suit, vest, cravat, and boots. And if someone else found the clothing bundles before they did, well, they clearly needed it more, and that was fine.

She allowed herself a moment to appreciate the look of Garcia dressed in formal black tie, the stark black and white coloring suiting his dark looks, the close-waisted tailcoat doing excellent things to his trim figure. _Focus_ , she reminded herself sternly, reaching out a gloved hand for his, tucking her arm through his. 

Heading for the front entrance of the palace-sized Palmer House with its soaring overhang, she couldn’t help but glance upward in the lobby, staring at the elaborate fresco in the mellow golden light of the lamps, framed by the towering columns. The hotel had been the first in the world to offer electric lights, and telephones, in the guest rooms. Everything about it was more or less Gilded Age opulence, but there was something beautiful about the exuberance of it all the same. 

“Nice place,” he murmured, and she sensed he was trying to not glance around too much himself. It wouldn’t do to look in awe, because they’d stick out like sore thumbs.

“They also invented the brownie here, if that helps make it a little more humble.”

“Let me guess. Another 1893 Columbian Exposition invention?”

“Nailed it. Created for box lunches for women going to the fair.”

He gave a soft snickering grumble of amusement. “And we went for the PBR. What was I thinking?”

She chuckled in return, wanting to reach out and nudge his hip--or more accurately, his thigh given his ridiculous height--with hers, but restraining herself. Hearing the strains of Strauss’ “Emperor Waltz” coming from what must have been the ballroom, she headed that way, pulling her arm from his, shrugging off her jacket and heading for the coat check. Handing it over to the clerk, an earnest-looking and well-scrubbed blond boy of maybe sixteen, she asked, “Dear boy, have you seen a friend of mine this evening checking her coat? A very striking red-haired woman, of...well, she hates to admit it, but around forty? My husband and I just returned from the Continent, and she and I haven’t seen each other in ages.” 

“No, ma’am,” he said, giving her a shy smile. “Should I tell her you’re here when she arrives though?”

“Oh, no, no.” Garcia leaned in, handing over his own coat, and gave a dazzling smile that put those dimples of his on full display. “Let’s have it be a delightful surprise!” She reached out and patted him lightly, mostly to rearrange the pistol so that it sat more unobtrusively. 

Unfortunately, surrendering their coats meant the firearms had to come with them. Much as the close-cut formal dress did wonders for his figure, jamming a pistol in his waistband caused a tell-tale bulge in the vest if the pistol moved just so. The fact he’d gone for a dark vest, a deep red like wine in moonlight, so saturated it was nearly black, certainly helped conceal it better. Her own bodice was tightly fitted, so her gun was strapped to the outside of her right thigh. Getting to it quickly beneath heavily flounced, bustled, and layered gold and deep crimson brocade skirts, and the three garters she’d taken to anxiously secure it, would be no easy feat. The only comfort was that Emma would likely be in no better position. 

Heading towards the ballroom doors, they paused at the man checking names against the guest list. “And you are?” he asked, looking them over.

“Count Georg and Countess Maria von Trapp,” she answered him, giving her most imperious stare. 

“I don’t know you,” he said, brows furrowing in owlish suspicion.

“I’m Maria Cameron. Certainly you’ve heard of my father, Donald Cameron?” She gave him an imperious glower. “Currently Senator Cameron? Former Secretary of War to President Grant? Or my grandfather Simon Cameron, who held that post for President Lincoln?” Her several-times-great-grandfathers in both cases, actually, but who was counting?

He pointedly ignored her, looking at Garcia. “Who are you?” he repeated. 

“Now you insult my Maria by ignoring her,” Garcia said, shaking his head, glowering like an irascible eagle and casting his accent a bit thicker, like it got when he was first waking up, or very tired late at night. “Look, young man, do you need my pedigree back six generations too? I am the _Count of Klobučar_ and my dear wife and I arrived here in Chicago after a long journey from my estate in Dalmatia to see her cousin, and decided to come to this admirable event. If you’re going to be so strict, well,” he gave a dramatic shrug, “so be it. Perhaps some other philanthropic organization would be happy to have my support.” 

“All right,” he said hastily, maybe sensing a challenge to a duel was forthcoming, or at least asking to talk to the manager. “My apologies.”

“Of course,” Garcia said smoothly. As they headed in, he leaned down and said, “Georg and Maria von Trapp, _really?_ ”

“I figured we’d do best with you playing the foreign noble.”

He gave a snort of amusement. “Von Trapp was only a _Ritter_ , you know. Which is a baron, and a non-hereditary one to boot, so maybe it’s more like a knighthood. Thanks for the nobility promotion to being Count von Trapp. Good choice, though, on Georg.”

“You’re a ‘Sound of Music’ fan?” She perked up at that. In that case, it was definitely going on their movie list.

“Hey, it’s a good musical! Besides, he’s a local boy for me. Von Trapp was born in Croatia, in Zadar, just up the coast from Split. And long before he met Maria, before they told the Nazis to go fuck themselves, he was a war hero, the top Austro-Hungarian U-boat ace of World War I. The submarine bases were on the Balkan coast: Pola is on the Croatian Istrian coast, the main naval base at the time, and Cattaro--Kotor now--is down in Montenegro.”

Those were things she hadn’t known, and listening to his enthusiasm for the local history made her smile. “So where’s our beautiful estate of Klobučar, sweetheart?”

He laughed, and she had the feeling if it wouldn’t have caused them to get more looks, he’d have laughed even louder and more genuinely in the full throes of amusement. “Like he even has a clue where Dalmatia is? Little joke of mine. It’s a tiny speck in the Adriatic. One of the smallest islands in Croatia, if not _the_ smallest. Maybe…” She could see him rapidly mentally juggling the math. “A fifth of a square mile?”

Now she tried to not laugh, scanning the crowd in the ballroom, even as he did, for either Jane Addams or Emma. “Seriously, that’s like being Earl of Gull Rock. Probably the smallest island in the Bay Area. It’s only like 200 feet long.”

He chuckled softly in response to that, but his tone went businesslike again. “I don’t see either of them yet. But it’s crowded here. Hard to see everyone.”

She glanced out at the dance floor, people coming and going from the crowded room with a break in the music, recognizing some of Chicago’s wealthiest men from their old black and white photographs. “Looks like the industrial bigwigs showed up. Philip Armour, Marshall Field, George Pullman...we could go take a turn out there, use that to survey the room. Good thing I taught you to waltz a few weeks back, huh?” she asked him, keeping her tone light and teasing.

It had been a relief to finally have something she could do that he couldn’t, to feel like she finally contributed something for all he’d given her and taught her. It felt even better for it to be something that wasn’t related to the art of war, something enjoyable simply for its own sake. The topic came up during one of their sparring sessions in the waning days in Gettysburg, when she’d equated fighting to dancing.

_”If you say so. I never learned,” he said sheepishly, undoing his hand wraps, looking away almost shyly._

_“Wait, never? You come from the former Austro-Hungarian Empire!”_

_“Ah, c’mon, Lucy, that collapsed a hundred years ago, and besides Croatia’s a totally different culture--that’s like saying it’s a shock you don’t love tractor pulls just because you’re American.”_

_She blushed. “I was only teasing,” she said, hearing how small and hesitant her voice went._

_“It’s all right.” His expression, gentle as it was, quelled her anxiety. “Besides, school dances weren’t much of a thing anyway in Yugoslavia, and I’ve pretty much been in one war or another ever since. How’d you learn?”_

_“Mom made me. She was into me developing what amounted to cotillion skills.”_

_He gave a wry smile. “Of course she was.”_

_“I actually enjoyed it,” she said defensively. “Dancing was something I did--I do--really well.” Though she hadn’t had a chance to formally dance in years. “Lorena didn’t dance either?” It eased her mind to realize she asked it curiously, rather than with the expectation of one more thing Lorena Valaitis Flynn did perfectly, one more area where Lucy fell short of the impressive woman he’d loved and lost. Because as he’d said, she wasn’t perfect. Because, as he’d said, he chose to be with her._

_He laughed, for a moment looking far away, but his smile was fond rather than tinged with bittersweet sorrow. “She always said she had a terrible sense of rhythm. Two left feet when it came to dancing. We both sort of held on to each other at our wedding for our first dance, and just swayed a bit. People thought it was very sweet.”_

_Undoing her own hand wraps briskly, she tossed them on the bench. She reached for his left hand with her right, bringing their joined hands to the waltz pose, stepping close enough so that when she told him to do it, he could put his right hand at her waist. “Then your first dance lesson starts now.”_

He’d taken to dancing easily, which hadn’t surprised her at all, given his lithe grace of movement. It had surprised her initially when they started taking some of the end of their sparring time for a dance or two, but it felt right, making time and room for something that was unapologetic fun rather than the utilitarian life they’d been living. Like with the karaoke, they needed something real, for their sanity. They’d forgotten that balance for so long.

She followed him out onto the parquet floor, taking position, as the orchestra stuck with Strauss and struck up “Tales From The Vienna Woods”. Something slipped, and she soon forgot to glance around, lost in the moment. It had felt good to dance with him in that dusty barn with the Amazon Echo playing waltz tunes. Because she hadn’t been wrong, it was like sparring with the sharp awareness of him and his body and his moves, but it was different too. It was pure pleasure rather than something purposeful. And if that had been an appetizer, this was the feast, dancing with him here with the orchestra, the opulent ballroom, the fancy dress rustling around her legs and feet, the giddy sensation of it all. She’d felt things between them move one step closer even then, and now felt that careful distance wavering again, even harder than it had before.

When the dance was over, it was like time had stopped for that moment, and she saw how he looked at her, still holding her close in the waltz position. Eyes wide in the lamplight, his expression was oddly vulnerable, something both tender and indecisive. After how she’d sprung that faux-kiss for mission cover on him in Zagreb when they’d been there to make sure his parents got together, before the Willow Glen Plantation mission, she’d wanted to be sure he was the one who kissed her this time. It felt only right to give him back that, after she’d kissed him like that, especially how she’d taken from him the choice of who the first kiss after losing Lorena would be. She’d had Wyatt do it to her back with Bonnie and Clyde, and it had felt odd, like she’d lost a choice she hadn’t even realized she’d had, and so she’d resolved to hold back and let him make the move this time. 

She could feel him weighing things, felt her own heart pounding. He smiled with a wistful tinge of regret and reached up, cupping her cheek with his hand for a moment, skin warm against hers even through his white gloves, but he didn't make the move. “I want more than to steal a moment,” he told her softly. “We need to make more time for you and me, away from the mission, away from the war.”

He wasn’t wrong on that, and she nodded. “I want that,” she said, heart in her throat. “I want...I know we were brought together because of this war, yes, but I don’t want us to be _together_ because of this war.” She’d made that mistake with Wyatt. She didn’t want to make it again, and have her heart broken all over again. Wartime romances might sound glamorous, but what happened when the adrenaline wore off, and reality set in?

He wet his lips, looking at her with a sort of reverent awe, as if in helping him dig up his hopes again, long buried and lost, it was like she’d handed him the glittering treasure of pharaohs lost for millenia. “I’d forgotten what it was like to have hopes. To have dreams and plans of a future. When there’s only survival and the fight, you abandon all that and...and it gets the mission done, yes, but living like that is its own prison. We’ve both lived like that, and we need to be free people again. There needs to be something there for us beyond defeating Rittenhouse. Because I promise you, Lucy,” that smile and those dark green-hazel eyes turned both soft and a little bit wicked, and he squeezed her gloved hands in his, “it’s going to be lot more between us than one night.” 

Oh, that look, and those words, weren’t fair. If there wasn’t the mission, and if they hadn’t just agreed that planning for the future before giving way to the abandon of living in the moment was how it needed to be, she would absolutely have to haul him upstairs to a very posh room in this hotel, peel off all the layers of clothing, and not get out of bed until they were both so sated they forgot their own names. As was, her vibrator was probably going to get a good workout when they got back. 

She forced herself to break the spell of the moment. “We’ll have time,” she promised him, and herself, hearing the husky note in her voice. “We’ll _make_ time.” Stepping back, she looked around the room again, still not seeing Emma’s distinctive fiery red hair, but she did spot a small figure in a tasteful but understated green and bronze gown, dark hair pulled back into a neat chignon. Jane Addams had arrived. “Found Jane,” she told Garcia.

“Found Emma,” he said in an undertone. “She just walked in.” Lucy turned her head to see her.

“Plan?” she asked calmly, even though her mind and heart started racing. “I get her out of here? I’ll be less...ah...scary, and people will think less of two women walking off together.”

“Good. Get her out, get her to Kate Warne, and I’ll meet you there. I’ll distract Emma, get her away from the door.” He gave her a derisive snort, and she could imagine him rolling his eyes. “She won’t pass up a chance to try to mess with me and brag again exactly how much smarter she is than me. If I can get her alone somewhere so I can take her out, all the better, but I’m not holding my breath. She’s arrogant, but she’s not that stupid.”

A thousand different thoughts raced through her head, all the way to a sudden terror that Emma might take a page from the KGB and stick Garcia with ricin right there on the ballroom floor, undetectable to these Victorians. “Be careful,” she warned him, compelled to put a hand on his arm again, making sure he paid attention and listened. “She could…”

“I know her type. She needs to break us before she kills us. Prove to us that we’re nothing, so it’s total victory for her.” His smile widened, took on the edge of ruthlessness. “And indulging in the power trip over getting the job down? That’s going to be her downfall.” He brushed a hand over hers, lingering for only an instant, then turned towards Emma. “Good luck, _ljubavi_.”

She watched him for a moment, striding towards their worst enemy with the air of cool unruffled confidence, but shook herself free of it. She had a job to do herself. Finding Addams again, she carefully worked her way through a sea of people, which was no mean feat given those bustled skirts. At least they were better than the 1860s crinolines. “Miss Addams?” she said brightly, seeing her looking around with an intelligently assessing look, taking in the room and obviously deciding who to talk to first. She’d been born to some privilege, her father deeply involved in Illinois politics. She’d been on the Grand Tour of Europe as was almost an expectation for young men and women of a certain class in these days. Her inheritance from her father’s death would provide some of the seed money for Hull House. Jane Addams might not be quite as rich as the gilded plutocrats that Chicago’s booming economy turned out so readily, but she could swim in these social waters with confidence anyway.

Addams turned to her, studying her with those light brown eyes. “Yes, I am.” She looked Lucy up and down. “I’m afraid you have the advantage of me.”

“My name is Maria...Maria Cameron.” She'd said that name in the ballroom as her supposed maiden name, and best to not risk getting the name “Maria von Trapp” in print before the actual one existed. Though how to explain to Kate Warne their ageing not at all in twenty-eight years since Lincoln’s train passed through Baltimore would be a neat trick. They’d have to confess to that. “I’m a private agent of inquiry aiding a Pinkerton investigation,” because it wouldn’t do to claim to be a Pinkerton herself when she was heading to a Pinkerton agent, “and I’m afraid there’s been a threat identified against you.”

“Against me?” Addams asked, sounding incredulous. “What reason could they have?”

“A certain sort heard about the great interest you had in the Toynbee Hall settlement house in London recently, and with as much unrest in Chicago as there’s been after the...unfortunate events in the Haymarket three years ago, the fact that you expressed a desire to aid the poor, plus their knowledge of your social station...there are, shall we say, some unsavory types.” She couldn’t resist throwing Holmes under the bus on this. “There’s a rather strange druggist out in Englewood. A confidence man and schemer if I ever saw one. Too charming by half. He spoke about how if you have the money to try to bring a settlement house to America, you certainly have enough money to make it worth your being swindled, or perhaps even, dare I say it, ransomed.” It matched Holmes’ MO closely enough. The swindling for certain, although Holmes went for murder once he’d gotten his hands on the money, rather than kidnapping for ransom.

Addams’ eyes lit up in surprise, and concern. “You’re certain? But how could he have heard about my plans? Ellen wouldn’t have told anyone, and tonight was going to be the first attempt to find sponsors and donors.” She nodded towards the large white banner draped behind the orchestra stage, proclaiming in bold red letters that the fundraiser was for Methodist missionaries in the Sudan, and adorned with idealized Christian missionaries preaching to kneeling native Africans with vapid stares and black features exaggerated to the point of caricature. Lucy somehow managed to not cringe at it seeing it up close and _in situ_ rather than in a book. “I’d figured that this would be a good place to try to find friends of the project.”

“I’m not certain how. Maybe your mail was intercepted. Maybe a conversation was overheard. If you’d been actively asking around for a good a site for your plan, that certainly could have been information that got peddled.” She looked at Addams, only hoping she could convince her quickly. “My husband,” she glanced over her shoulder and saw Garcia had neatly corralled Emma and pulled her out on the dance floor, and the orchestra, “is dealing with one of the man’s agents right now to distract her. Please let me get you to safety, and hopefully we’ll see the beast arrested by morning and things made safe for you again.”

Addams squared her shoulders, and sighed, nodding. “There’ll be more chances to plead my case.” She gave a wry smile, gesturing towards the banner. “Perhaps trying to barge in on the call for aid for Methodist missionaries to Sudan isn’t the best choice anyway. It’s been my observation that there’s a particular blindness to act to help those in need right under our noses, and to congratulate ourselves in meddling in the affairs of far-off lands instead.” The smile turned shy and self-conscious. “Heaven knows I’ve been guilty of it myself.”

She almost chortled, but bit it back at the last second. Yeah, Jiya would like her. She’d always admired Jane Addams herself, one of the most formidable and impressive American women, and exactly how much she’d contributed to so many social causes. But meeting her here, in person, it was hard to keep the stars from her eyes, and her tongue from becoming tied. Only the urgency of the moment, and the awareness that if the orchestra chose a short tune that could be their sole advantage gone, kept her on track. They’d already played “Vienna Woods”, one of the longer Strauss choices, and even that was only, what, twelve minutes? She and Addams would have a narrow head start, so she needed to buckle down and focus, much as she wanted to geek out and gush about how amazing she thought Addams and Hull House and all her works were. There would be time for that. “Then let’s be off. I’ll take you to Agent Warne.” Warne, in this altered timeline where she’d survived past 1868, had married a man named John Harriott after the Civil War, but she’d kept working for Allan Pinkerton under the name of Warne. Not completely unknown even in Victorian times, since famous actresses and the like kept using their better-known maiden names professionally, even if legally they’d changed to their husband’s surname. “She’ll keep you safe.”

“Kate Warne? The agent who helped chase Marm Mandelbaum out from New York?” Marm had been one of the linchpins of graft in the city, acting in the underworld while also operating in clear view, connected to the corrupt Tammany Hall political machine and New York high society. Warne had apparently spent months infiltrating the organization by posing as dealing in stolen silk, a role that a male Pinkerton agent had probably taken previously.

They began walking to the door of the ballroom, and she willed herself to not anxiously look back, make sure that Emma hadn’t seen them. The gun strapped to her thigh felt like an even more reassuring weight. “One and the same. Only one of her many triumphs. She even kept President Lincoln safe, once, on his way to Washington.”

Addams smiled a little sadly. “I had heard that. Perhaps if she’d been in the theater that night, things might have turned out very differently for both Mr. Lincoln, and our country.” Trying to not remember that night herself, she only wished it could have been that way. Maybe it was better that Emma not go after Lincoln in 1865, because she was fairly sure both she and Garcia would be determined to keep him alive at this point, history be damned.

Hurrying to reclaim their jackets, now she did risk a glance over her shoulder, hearing the waltz music continue. Garcia was doing his job. Emma wasn’t charging after them. Still no time to lose. Shrugging into her coat, she headed out into the winter evening, feeling the icy teeth of the wind against her face. If nothing else, those heavy skirts provided insulation. Seeing a hansom cab at the curb, the heavily bundled cabbie obviously hoping for a wealthy passenger, she resolved to tip him as well as she could. Climbing in after Jane, the two of them and their skirts crammed into the cab, she gave Warne’s address, and said, “Quickly, please. It’s pretty urgent.”

“That’s all right, Jennett will be glad to move a bit brisker in this weather,” the cabbie said, voice a bit muffled under a thick green scarf, but she could imagine he was smiling. “Keeps her warm.” He popped the reins, but only loosely, and the black mare responded with a fresh surge of speed. 

She was glad that being seated on the right side of the cab meant she could ruck up her skirt there to reach the pistol. Getting it free from her impromptu multi-garter holster, she dropped her skirt again, holding the pistol in her lap. Jane saw it there, and startled at the sight. “Do you mean to--”

“I only want to protect you,” she reassured her. “This is in case anyone tries to stop us.”

She took it in stride, which Lucy would expect from someone who’d stand up to any number of people in the future. She was only twenty-eight right now, but the steel was there in her already. “That’s a rather strange looking pistol.”

“It’s German.”

“The Germans do have marvelous engineering skills.” She sighed, smiling ruefully. “There are so many wonders in Europe, but so much that’s far less beautiful too.”

That seemed like a wide open invitation. “So tell me about your planned settlement house?” Lucy asked. Yes, she’d read all the books, the papers, the analyses, knew more about Hull House and Addams’ career than the woman herself knew at this point. “I know a bit about Toynbee Hall from when it came up in the investigation, and it seems admirable, but...what do you want to do here? And why?” She knew all that, but sitting here with the real life Jane Addams herself, with nothing but time to kill on the ride, she couldn’t resist hearing the explanation from the woman herself, and picking her brain. She wanted Addams talk about the idea, hear the passion in her voice and see it on her face for being so inspired to fight the good fight for so many of society’s underdogs, rather than reading printed words on a page. 

Just then, the cabbie pulled over, and Lucy sighed at his timing. She stuck the gun back in her coat pocket so she wouldn’t alarm him as he came back to help her and Addams out of the cab. “Then you’ll have to tell me about it later, once we’re more settled.”  
Warne’s rooms were on the second floor of the building, and she knocked on the door, trying to think once again how to explain this. She answered, dressed in a loose blue-green house gown. Her eyes were still bright and intelligent, though at nearly sixty, her hair had gone grey and her face held the lines of age. Even despite her having aged, Lucy would have known her in an instant, and from Warne’s quizzical expression, twenty-eight years wasn’t long enough for her to have forgotten either, and to question how exactly someone looking almost exactly like Lucinda Flynn had shown up on her doorstep. But she looked confused, rather than suspicious. Maybe twenty-eight years, innumerable other cases, and a very brief acquaintance of a few hours on a darkened train, was enough to blur the edges of Warne’s memory. Good thing she hadn’t given the surname of “Flynn” this time. “I know my showing up like this will seem strange, Agent Warne,” she said, willing Warne to not slam the door in her face or start demanding an explanation, expecting her expression was nothing if not pleading. “But you once protected President Lincoln. Tonight,” she stood aside and gestured back towards Addams, “we need your help to protect two more people from assassins. I promise I’ll explain.”

Standing there, boots dripping slush, Warne’s eyes stayed narrowed for long enough that Lucy was about to turn around, try to find another safe haven for the night, and only hope that Warne wouldn’t call the cops. Then her grip on the door eased, and she moved aside, gesturing them in. “Yes, of course. You look very much like someone I once knew, and it caught me aback. You both look frozen through, so you’d best come inside. I’ll make some coffee.”


	19. 3x05: Addams Family Values (Wyatt/Jiya: Chicago, Illinois, January 1889)

He hadn’t seen Jessica in nearly two months, and he felt like he could barely keep himself from rushing to her and either hugging her or strangling her. She looked tired, pale. Strangely small too, like the outsized vibrance had left her and reminded him once again she wasn’t physically that big. He couldn’t help but drop his gaze down to her stomach, and he couldn’t breathe when even through the winter coat he could see she was much bigger than she’d been before. No, she hadn’t lied, he’d never seriously believed she had, but this was a punch in the face of reality. 

Their kid was real. He’d been so overjoyed to have her back, to fix things, to make their relationship into what it should have been. She’d been happy too, hadn’t she? He didn’t subscribe necessarily to Lucy’s dreamy submission to the idea of fate, that _everything is meant to happen for a reason_. He was no slave to some greater plan, he had free will. But maybe at least on this, lying there with Jess when she told him, the few weeks after before it all came crashing down, it felt like something clicked into place that had meant to be.  
Even now he couldn’t quite shake the feeling. They’d tried for a kid before a few times, when he was home on leave, and it hadn’t happened. Admittedly he’d been half-hearted about it, wanting a kid himself, but always worrying in the back of his mind about the kind of dad he would be, though she’d wanted a kid so much he’d tried to hide the hesitation. Just one more thing he’d screwed up for her.

But if it hadn’t happened when they were twenty-one, totally off birth control, and supposedly fertile as bunnies, how could it have happened now when they were thirty-five, and got careless with the condoms only a few times? It felt like they had put aside all the shit that had marred their marriage over half a lifetime, and finally got it right, and they would get it right there too. He had to admit “fate” made a more compelling argument there than “oops, dumbass luck”. 

She saw him looking, hands instinctively dropping to cradle her stomach. Somewhere around Thanksgiving, she’d said. Just a little over two months left. 

She was there to come back to them, and he wanted so much to believe it, and Lucy believed it, but it felt like he’d had to cover his heart in Kevlar to hold himself together. He’d had to get through losing Jessica, being used by her, having the promise of that child taken away, and yes, when the weight of his own guilty fuck ups came crashing down on him, and the team all turned away from him except for, improbably, Garcia fucking Flynn. He’d nearly crashed and burned and Denise had been right to pull him off the Warne mission, but scraping together the disaster of his heart cost him. The armor remained when it came to Jessica, because he couldn’t stand to have her hurt him again. It wasn’t like a bulletproof vest with velcro straps to help put it on and take it off at will. It had set there, thick and solid, keeping him together, but he couldn’t open up just like that to let her in again. Things couldn’t be like they’d been. 

“So you’re giving yourself up.” He made himself stay back a step or two from her, trying to figure out what to do or say. He’d waited months for this, but now that it was here, everything was a jumbled mess.

She nodded, eyes darkly shadowed beneath her bonnet. “Do whatever you want with me. I guess I deserve it.”

“You guess,” Jiya said dryly. She’d stood back a little from the two of them, but it was obvious she wasn’t going to walk away and let them have total privacy. He tamped down the flash of anger at it. Yeah, they were right. This wasn’t just about him, and Jessica. Jiya deserved to be a part of this too. She was owed something for Rufus and for how she’d suffered as Rittenhouse’s captive and then being lost in the 1880’s. So much as part of him bristled and wanted to tell her to butt out of the conversation, he told that part to shut up and accept that in the end, Jiya probably had to call the shots on this. The claim she held on whatever justice turned out to be was bigger than his, and he had to make himself be OK with that.

But if she tried to shoot Jessica dead right here, well, that was going to be another story. Though she probably would have done it already if she was going to do it. Though he couldn’t pretend he wasn’t afraid for Jessica. He’d seen prisoners surrendering before, and yeah, once or twice after particularly brutal losses, there had been a blind eye turned, a claim that they’d reached for a gun or an explosive trigger that may or may not have been a real fear. People did “surrender” only to get close enough to attack. The justification felt matter-of-fact then, but the more he looked at it now, the more it became hard to swallow. “So you’re sorry you lied to us. That you betrayed us. That you kidnapped Jiya and handed her over to Rittenhouse. That you were willing to chase her to 1888 to--I dunno, capture or kill her there--and that you helped get Rufus killed because you supported Emma.” 

He looked at her, silently pleading: _Say it, just admit it, then hopefully we can move on_. He misjudged something in her, which caught him by surprise, because her head snapped up, jaw set tightly, eyes suddenly burning intensely with emotion. “I don’t need you to walk me through what I’ve done. God knows I’ve thought about it enough ever since it happened. And like you’ve never, ever gotten someone killed when you didn’t mean it, Wyatt,” she snapped at him.

That did it, and the rein on his own temper frayed. “You know I did! Do you know how many times I’ve thought about that night at the Pelican and wished I could take it back? How much I hated myself for things ending up with you dead because I got that pissed that you were so happy to see Russ? You ended up dead over _that_!”

“You sure as hell didn’t learn,” Jessica hissed, eyes narrowing, “from how you were all over Lucy and how fucking _obvious_ you were about warning Flynn to back off from her.” 

“If you two are turning this into a couples’ argument, I’m leaving you to go find Lucy Parsons and get on with the mission,” Jiya snapped, stepping in between them, jaw clenched and eyes narrowed. “And I’m inclined to leave both of you here in 1889, and tell you good luck living out the rest of your lives here. Because I’m really, really sick of you two, your stupid relationship dysfunction, and just how much it’s hurt all of us already.” 

That hit like a bucket of cold water to the face, and he opened his mouth to protest that they couldn’t untangle all of it from the bigger picture. But Flynn--Garcia, _still_ felt a little weird calling him that sometimes--hadn’t been wrong. He needed to not focus on himself and Jess. That was what had gotten this whole situation incredibly fucked up in the first place, and he’d repeated old bad habits already. “You’re right,” he said, first nodding to Jiya, then to Jess. “I didn’t learn. Or at least, not enough. And you and I both screwed up a lot and we cost everyone with it.” He breathed in slowly, trying to gather together all his stray thoughts and emotions. Much as Garcia told him to come clean, he wasn’t good at the big speeches, and it felt wrong to just do all of that right now. It would be making it too much about them, and being honest, some of that he really didn’t want to say in front of Jiya anyway. She had a right to hear some of it, but a lot of it she didn’t. “But we need to not make it about us. This is about you getting away from Rittenhouse. That’s all that matters to me right now. Whatever you make of that.”

Her eyes widened, then she glanced down at her hands, still on her stomach, then at Jiya again. “I…”

“Jiya? What do you…” He want sure how to finish that sentence. _What do you want to do with her?_ sounded so callous. But he had to let Jiya help decide, didn’t he?

Jiya stood there, arms crossed over her chest, head bowed and hunkering down in her coat so far that the chocolate brown velvet collar practically snuggled up against her ears like the opening of a turtle shell. She seemed frozen for a moment, like one more piece of this winter landscape, if not for the way she raised her head then, and then a puff of white breath like dragon-smoke as she exhaled into the freezing air. “There’s a big part of me that never wants to see your face again, you know?”

“I know.”

“And there’s also a part of me that wants to abandon your ass here in 1889. Make you live out the rest of your life in an unfamiliar place, a stranger to the culture, never knowing what happened to the people you loved.”

Jessica nodded, expression wary. “That’d be only fair.” 

Jiya shook her hair, wisps of black hair coming loose from her chignon with the vehemence of it. “No, ‘fair’ would be coming back three years later, letting you hope that everything will be OK again, and then making you hold Wyatt as he dies. Let you plead with him to not die and know it’s useless, and walk away covered in his blood. So you can feel exactly what I felt. Or maybe I should let you and Wyatt reconcile, and then come back five years later so you can wake up in the middle of the night to see him and your child murdered, and send you running for your life because I framed you for the whole thing. So then you’ll know exactly what Garcia felt. Or maybe you need to feel what Lucy and I did in being kidnapped and held prisoner, expected to serve the enemy. That all seems fair, I’d say. Maybe you weren’t directly involved in some of that, but you were a part of Rittenhouse even then.”

He swallowed hard. Calm as Jiya’s voice was in saying it, this wasn’t going well. Jessica shifted from one foot to another, an anxious habit of hers, but she didn’t say anything either. “I can’t argue with that,” Jessica said, voice soft but surprisingly steady. “But if you’re going to kill me, I’d ask you at least--” He expected she was going to plead for her life long enough for the baby’s survival. He’d fight like hell for that, and if Jiya thought she was going to kill or torture Jessica, he definitely wasn’t getting on that train. Foremost right to call the shots or not, that was a line he wouldn‘t allow to be crossed.

Jya cut her off. “But I’m not really interested in what’s fair. I’m interested in what’s right. And if you woke up enough to want to get away from Rittenhouse, then I’m not going to throw you to the lions. We’ll bring you back with us. I’m really not sure whether we’ll let you live with us so you know where we are and can hear our plans. We’ll figure that out.” Something entered her tone, something dark and fierce. “But I swear to Allah if you betray us again, even if you run, I’ll be hunting you down to put a bullet in your head myself. And none of them will argue I have the cause to do it.” She turned her head to stare at Wyatt, as if daring him to contradict her.

He couldn’t. God help him, he couldn’t. He’d pleaded for Jess’ life and a second chance, and he had to believe her because he couldn’t stand to do otherwise. But if this was all a lie again, especially this time being so calculated rather than based on confusion and fear, he couldn’t argue for keeping her alive to backstab them a third time.

Jessica nodded, licked her lips a bit nervously. “Can Wyatt and I talk for a minute? Alone?”

“No.” Jiya looked at her steadily, unapologetically. “Neither of you has exactly earned that. I don’t trust you to not knock him out and run. And honestly, I don’t think I fully trust him to not let you escape again. So fine, I’ll back off a few feet, but I’ll be staying right here, thanks.” She went back maybe three large steps, but he saw her right hand in her coat pocket, obviously clutching her pistol, ready to draw and use it.

Jessica stepped closer to him. His heart skipped a beat. From the long habit of years, he instinctively reached out to hold her, to draw her close, but stopped himself. “Jess…”

“No time,” she said, shaking her head slightly. She kept her voice loud enough for Jiya to hear, glancing over her shoulder at their silent guard. “Just...I realized something. Just now. I can’t come back with you.”

“Don’t be stupid, of course--”

She turned her face up to his, something determined and diamond-hard in her eyes. “If I come back now I’ll be the one you let run away from Rittenhouse out of pity for how they used me. But Jiya’s never going to trust me. None of you will, really.” Her words were coming faster, a rush like a tumbling avalanche. “And it’ll never change. I’ll never be anything but a screw up who has to keep hiding from it, who regrets everything. I can’t let you shelter me from the consequences or the chance to make it right. I’ve gotta face this, Wyatt. You’re letting Flynn earn his way back. They’re letting you fix your mistakes. I need to do it too. I need to be able to look at myself in the mirror and not hate myself. I need to be able to look our daughter in the eyes and tell her that Mommy’s a good person.”

“Our...daughter?” Now he could hardly breathe. That child took another step towards reality, despite all the months he’d missed. He’d be a father to a little girl, and he couldn’t bear to imagine what she’d look like, whether she’d have Jessica’s looks or his, what kind of person she’d be. It hurt too much, because it made him want too much, made him afraid for too much. Somewhere in the daze, he actually felt a stab of pity for Garcia. This kid was ripping his heart apart already with how much he’d feared he’d never know them. He couldn’t imagine what loving her, watching her grow, and then watching her be murdered, would do to him. He wasn’t remotely strong enough for that. No wonder the man had broken to pieces. 

Her eyes shone brightly, and it wasn’t only the cold that stung his eyes now too. “They told me at the last ultrasound. I...I talk to her. I call her Danielle. Dani.”

“Dani. Yeah.” They’d talked about names, and that was the one they’d agreed upon. Danielle, and then Miranda as the middle name, for Jessica’s beloved grandma. “Jess, you can’t…what are you even suggesting?”

She inhaled, bracing herself, shoulders back. He saw her gaze turning to Jiya, making the proposal to her. “I’ll go back. I turn double agent. I’ve got some information, but I get every last thing I can from Emma and Rittenhouse in terms of information without blowing my cover, and I give it to you.”

His immediate response was to say _You can’t_ , but given how much trouble telling her what she could and couldn’t do had gotten them in before, he kept his mouth shut only with an effort. But this wasn’t the same, was it? This time he would say it because what she was proposing was terrifying. She wanted to walk right back into the lair of the dragon and try to escape unscathed again. She’d died once. Her coming back had been a miracle, even if it was a shitty Rittenhouse ploy. How could he face that again? 

“Information. What else?” Jiya said, tone neutral.

“I can’t bring you the Mothership. She’s taught damn near a dozen people to pilot by this point, but she won’t let me near that.” She gave a wry laugh. “I should have seen a lot sooner how big that omission was. She kept saying ‘We’ve got enough pilots, focus on keeping yourself and your kid healthy’. God, I was so stupid. She’s very, very careful in how much anyone knows. Me included.”

“Can you kill Emma?”

“I could. There’s always going to be an unguarded moment. But she’s got those kids so indoctrinated that they’re probably still going to carry out their missions. Maybe even more fanatically so if she dies, and they may just start unleashing anarchy on history with unplanned things too. So yes, but it’s not going to do you much good. She’s the mastermind, yes, but the disease has already spread.”

“Convenient.”

“I’m not lying to save her!”

“If I said it was an expectation, would you do it?”

Jessica hesitated for only a second. “Yes.” She added defensively, “It’s not that it’s her, it’s that I haven’t…killed anyone. Myself.”

“Neither had I,” Jiya pointed out. “But you learn when you have to do it to save your own life. Can you destroy the Mothership for us?”

“I can’t exactly order C4 off the Internet. And she keeps the silo locked unless she’s in there working or doing mission prep. Only she has the access code. She’s squirrelly and paranoid about that, after how Anthony tried to blow it up when Flynn was in charge. But give me some explosives, and I’d do my best.” She met Jiya’s gaze squarely, hands spread. “She’ll know it was one of us. So I’m not making it out of that alive. And I’m not letting her capture me and keep me alive to get her hands on Dani.” 

“Jiya,” now he did need to protest.

“So all you can do is spy.”

“I’d try to kidnap one of the kids and get them to pilot the Mothership to you,” Jessica said, a snarky edge entering her voice, “but turns out she’s trained them to commit suicide rather than end up in enemy hands.” Given what happened to the kid in Zürich, that made a horrible sense. “Besides, didn’t you say you weren’t interested in ‘fair’? So yes, I’d either destroy the Mothership or kill Emma, but that’s all you’d get from me. Taking Rittenhouse, what’s left of it anyway, would be on you. I gave you the safehouse address. Coordinate a date and time if you want. I blow up the Mothership, try to kill Emma, you move in and mop them all up.”

Garcia wasn’t wrong in saying that it was too easy, that trying to chase each others’ safehouses had done nothing. He’d seen that when the others were in San Antonio, when his storming Rittenhouse’s headquarters meant the Mothership and the Rittenhouse leadership slipped through their fingers again. Garcia--Flynn, it was easier to think of that man as Flynn--had done the same back in the day, running with Anthony, and then eventually slipping across the border into Mexico where it would be a hell of a job to get a strike team without causing an international incident. The days of being able to take them out in the lair had passed. “I don’t think that’s gonna happen, Jess. It hasn’t worked so far. We didn’t get Flynn back in 2016, we didn’t get Rittenhouse earlier this year. If Emma’s that paranoid, we’re not gonna get lucky enough to take the whole thing out in one fell swoop. Even with an inside person.” He didn’t want to make her bargain seem less promising, but on the other hand, he couldn’t stand to watch her desperately try to promise something he already knew she’d fail and die in attempting to deliver.

Jessica’s shoulders sagged. “Then, yeah, all I’ve got is information. And I can’t get you detailed mission reports. Emma doesn’t exactly discuss strategy with me. She told me only half an hour ago what my mission was here. But I can get you what they’re studying, what Emma’s told them to prepare for, things like that. Lucy’s smart. Hopefully with that, it can help you keep up, or even get ahead.”

Jiya stared at her for a long time. “You’re either serious, or an even better actress than you were before.”

“I’m desperate. I’m not gonna lie about that. But I wasn’t even old enough to read when they got hold of me, let alone think for myself. She’s doing it now to college kids when they’re still young and dumb and looking to feel important. I can’t bring Rufus back to you, but I can do what I can, what none of you can, to help take them down.”

He wasn’t going to tell her about the plan to get Rufus back. That was information that they needed Emma to not have, whether Jessica would tell her, or God forbid, somehow torture it out of Jessica if she were captured.

Jiya glanced over at him. “Wyatt?” Surprised that she asked him, he couldn’t think for a moment, couldn’t find his tongue. It was all crazy. But at the same time--if it had been him, yes, he would have gone to any lengths to make it right. She was capable. Smart and strong and she’d used that in an utterly deluded scheme because those Rittenhouse fuckers had brainwashed her, but he had to finally step back enough to admit she wasn’t the girl next door he’d married, the bartender, the golden girl with the bright sunny laught. She was that, but she was many things he didn’t know.

All he could manage was a few rough words. “Will you be safe? For your sake, and...and Dani’s?” Maybe there was still the chance he’d know how Garcia felt. But _You can’t, you have to think of the baby first_ felt trite. He’d have gone off to war with her pregnant, chased what he needed to do, and nobody would have said that to him. He wanted to keep her safe, keep both of them safe, but he also couldn’t imagine making her miserable for the rest of her life by denying her the chance to make it right. He wanted to be a man who could look his daughter in the eyes too and say that Daddy was a good person. He was still working towards that. Jess deserved the same chance.

“I lied enough to fool all of you.” There was no triumph in her voice at it, only an exhausted sort of shame. She bit her lip. “And I’m so, so sorry for it. But if I’m that good to fool people I was really close to, I can fool her. She’s good at reading people’s vulnerabilities so she can exploit them, but she’s not good at reading people, period. She can’t imagine someone being cunning enough to outsmart her.”

The sound of someone drunkenly singing and wandering down the alley punctured the bubble that seemed to hold only the three of them. He turned seeing a stumbling figure peering at the three of them, bleary blue eyes studying Jessica and Jiya in turn. “Fuck off, we’re busy!” he snapped, ready to grab him by the collar and drag him off.

“You’re not looking to have the both of ‘em, right?” he slurred. His mouse-brown eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Or maybe you are. Impressive. I mean, you can…” He gestured down towards his crotch. “Get a rise again that quick?”

“Maybe when he was eighteen,” Jessica muttered in an undertone, sounding on the edge of bursting out in nervous laughter.

 _We are seriously not having this conversation, especially about the capabilities of my dick._ He felt his cheeks burning, glad the cold probably covered the sudden rise of color. “What if I am?” he challenged. It seemed like the easiest way to get rid of the guy. 

“You can have the colored gal. I’ll take the blond.” He grinned at Jessica, showing surprisingly good teeth. “I like a nice plump little partridge.”

“Sorry,” Jiya said smoothly. “This fella’s hired us both. You’ll have to find another one.” He wandered off, waving farewell over his shoulder, grumbling drunkenly. Once his voice faded, she made the dry observation, “I didn’t really miss people always assuming I’m a sex worker. Not that there’s anything wrong with it, but when you’re not selling, they could really be assholes about it. Nice to see the 1880s are the same elsewhere.”

Jessica’s horrified snort of laughter finally broke loose. “I’m sorry,” she said, putting her hands up, almost stammering, “I’m not laughing at you, it’s just…”

“No, he was pretty ridiculous.” Jiya turned her attention back to Jessica. “So say I let you go. How does this work? How do we get in touch with you?”

“I...Rittenhouse didn’t ask me to report in on you. I was…” She sighed. “I was supposed to kill as many of you as I could. Starting with Flynn, and then you and Rufus as the pilots. I couldn’t. But I don’t know. Burner phone? Facebook Messenger? It’s not like she monitors my Internet, given she hasn’t noticed me researching all our missions like crazy to find out where she’s been lying to me. I’ve got maybe two months. If I have one condition, it’s that whether we’ve stopped them or not before then, I need to get out before Dani’s born. I’m not risking Emma getting her hands on my girl.” _My_ girl, and it broke his heart a little to hear her say it that way, but he wasn’t going to fight her on it right now. She’d decided it that way, but no, he hadn’t been there so far. 

He had to ask. Because he needed to hear it, and Jiya probably did too. “Say we let you go, and try to gather intel for us. I need to know: can I trust you?”

“Yes.” She met his eyes without flinching. “I’m making this choice for me. I helped make things worse. I need to help make them better.”

He hadn’t trusted her that night in San Diego when he should have, and so many other times. He’d overcorrected on that, because he shouldn’t have trusted her in the bunker. This time, maybe he shouldn’t trust her, but he couldn’t help but want to hope, want to believe. And maybe he owed it to her to give her the benefit of the doubt, with her laying her cards all on the table like this. Maybe this was how it was supposed to be, some middle ground between suspecting her without cause and willfully ignoring the evidence right in front of his nose. If he hadn’t recklessly helped get her killed in 2012, Rittenhouse would never have needed to save her and cause all of this. He nodded to her, and looked over to Jiya.

Jiya thought about it for a long time, or at least what felt like it. “All right,” she said finally. “You spy for us. We get you out before your baby’s born. My term? You group message me _and_ Wyatt for now.” Her intent gaze bored into both of them. “That way I know neither of you is keeping anything from us.”

Jessica nodded decisively. “That’s fair. What’s your number?”

“628-555-1882. I’ve disabled the GPS, by the way, so Emma shouldn’t even bother trying to track it.”

“Do you want me to come help you get Lucy Parsons?”

“We’ve got it,” Jiya told her coolly.

He shook his head. “If you’re going to get going on this, you’d better make sure you find Emma.” Because he wouldn’t put it beyond Emma to abandon her here anyway, and without the Lifeline done and proven, no guarantee he could come back for her.

“All right. I’ll tell her that I got caught up in the demonstration, the cops insisted on escorting me home, and by the time I got to the Eldorado, she was gone.” She stooped, reaching a bit clumsily for her pistol. He saw how the bulk of her stomach made her clumsier and hurried to crouch, getting the gun before her. Straightening, he held it out to her. She took it, tucking it in her pocket. She hesitated then, eyes meeting his, and then he couldn’t help it, didn’t even care that Jiya was watching and probably saw weakness in him at it. He had to step in and give her a fierce hug, wishing so furiously that she really was telling the truth, that she was on their side. Angry at her still but humbled at the fierce determination to walk right into Emma’s lair and fuck things up to win back her own honor. So scared too that this would be the last he’d see of her. God, was this how she’d always felt watching him walk out the door, heading off to war again? How had she ever withstood that mix of pride and terror? She held on to him just as tight, and he wondered how frightened she’d been in Rittenhouse, how long it had been since she’d let down her guard. Though had she ever, really? Had it been up ever since she was a kid and they got to her?

“Be safe,” he said, barely able to get the words out, breathing in the herbal scent of her hair from that shampoo she’d used ever since they were kids, mingled with the crisp winter air. “Please, Jess, just...be safe.” He couldn’t say it aloud, but he felt like the words hung between them all the same. _I can’t bear you dying again. I’m not strong enough for that._

“You too,” she said, a rough edge in her own voice, and she was the one who finally stepped back, and he was glad she hadn’t made him do it. 

He watched her go, leaving the alley with shoulders square and head held high, feeling absurdly ready to fall to pieces despite that Kevlar on his heart. Carefully locking it down, he turned back to Jiya. “Let’s go. We’ve got a mission to do.” It would keep him busy and that was what he needed right now. Whether he’d sleep soundly tonight, or any other night to come, was another story.

~~~~~~~~~~

The police station was right nearby, so it was easy to get Kate Warne’s address there. After that, they walked away into the sullen crowd with the cops still eyeing people nervously, a few signs and banners lying on the ground, crumpled and trampled with slushy bootprints all over them. Wyatt moved almost robotically, like a man in a dream, or a waking nightmare. Jiya decided to let him have some space for that. Much as his self-absorbed crap had been the root of so many problems before, she’d admit that he’d just taken a pretty heavy hit. Confronted with the baby, confronted with the hope Jessica was walking away, and then her turning right around and plunging back into danger.

She wanted to believe in Jessica too, in spite of everything. She’d believed in Connor, and he’d proven himself weak and scared and terrible, but then he’d done his best to make it right. He’d become the man and boss she’d believed he was when she took that scholarship, when she eagerly accepted the job at Mason Industries. Garcia had screwed up horribly, but he’d turned away from it too. She wanted to believe that the woman who’d helped them with bunker tech, who knew how to pop perfect popcorn, had been her friend. 

It had felt real, and she wondered even now how much had been a lie, and how much had been a conflicted Jessica at war with herself. So maybe she’d give her a second chance. But it seemed Jessica herself had figured out the best road possible--try to prove herself, bring something of value to the table rather than simply her choosing to walk away. She hadn’t said it aloud, but for Jiya, maybe that would make it easier to bear being in the same room with her again. They’d all fought and suffered and lost for this cause. If Jessica wanted to truly belong, it felt right that she take on some risk too. And she thought that the flash of fear she’d seen in Jessica’s eyes, at war with the determination, felt real.

Wyatt finally stopped on the curb, leaning heavily against a lamppost. “Jiya...I hate to ask, but…do you know, can you see...”

“I’m not a crystal ball,” she managed to keep her voice from snapping. “You don’t hand me a quarter and demand…”

“I’m sorry,” he said, huddling tighter into himself. “I…” He raised his head, looking at her, abject misery in his blue eyes. “How the hell did you ever manage it? Standing back and watching Rufus go on missions? Never knowing if he’d come back OK, or come back at all?”

Her breath caught, both from the memory, and the question itself. So maybe Wyatt had changed too that he could empathize. He was the soldier. He’d never been the one left behind, waiting, hoping, praying. “Honestly, I watched a lot of fun and trashy TV,” she said heavily. “Because I couldn’t stand to think about it. This year, Jessica watched with me, while she was...with us.”

They’d marathoned Vanderpump Rules because Jiya needed something to do in those long, long hours and sometimes overnights when the team was gone in the Lifeboat. Jessica hadn’t questioned it, or made it sound frivolous to sit there and watch hours of Hulu while their friends and loved ones were out risking their lives. Jess had understood that light distraction was the best thing possible. So it became OK to choose to pass on Handmaid’s Tale that day because worrying about the team in the past was enough, she didn’t need to worry about the future and making America Gilead again, whether by natural evolution of the political climate or Rittenhouse’s actions.

She’d been there, and seeing him in agony like that, she couldn’t help but want to help. He’d been a shitty friend in the past, but he was trying to be better, he wasn’t expecting everyone to just give way to what he wanted. She’d seen how he’d held back, let her take the lead, let her make the final decision with Jessica, and could well imagine the Wyatt of only a few months ago insisting, _She’s my wife, so my opinion counts for the most._

She had felt what he’d felt, and maybe she could offer him some certainty, one way or another. Besides, she probably should have tried to trance before she made that deal with Jessica. She’d already maybe have a time of it explaining it to Denise how she’d had Jessica right there, and let her go. Somehow she suspected Lucy, and even Garcia, wouldn’t rake her over the coals as much.

“I’ll try,” she told him. “It’s not gonna be ideal. I can’t really relax and focus, I’ll only be able to grab a quick glance before people notice me looking strange, plus we’re already in the past, so I can only see pre-1889 now. If Rittenhouse goes 1890 or later from now on, no dice.” With the noise of the city around them, the winter chill, it wouldn’t be ideal, but she’d try.

He stepped aside, and she leaned against the post herself for support, and he moved in closer, proving some cover from both the raw breeze kicking up and from peoples’ gazes, the two of them probably looking like two lovers in conversation. Well, better that than being assumed he was buying and she was selling. 

She closed her eyes, focused, and dived into the silken darkness of the timestream, seeing all the flickers of light like a billion stars, lighting up the past, all the places and people and events that had shaped the world they lived in right now. She veered hard away from looking for Rufus, carefully locking up everything about him as she always did while swimming in the vision, not ready to see yet whether they’d succeed or not in Chinatown again. That one she would insist they discover for themselves. She couldn’t shake the feeling, superstitious as it was, that she’d condemned him to die with that vision, and she wouldn’t condemn him again. 

_Jessica Logan_ , she thought intently, shaping the picture of the woman in her mind, blond hair and upturned nose and brown eyes. The process was no different from trying to search for _January 1889 Chicago_. But it still felt like the weirdest Google search ever.

But nothing popped about Jessica actually in the field with them, obviously there as either their ally or their friend. Of course. That would have been too easy. _Really, you can’t cooperate?_ Then again, it wasn’t like the visions cooperated to give her the exact address, name, and details of Rittenhouse’s mission either. She probably could get more if she spent longer in the past, searching thoroughly, but then she’d end up like Stanley, spending a full week in 1912, brain completely rewritten and rewired. The migraines she usually got after a vision told her that wasn’t a great idea. Time-trancing was a tool, but one to be used with care.

Though maybe her search parameter of _exclude Rufus_ prevented that. Maybe anything of Jessica in the past with them included Rufus, and she wasn’t going to go there. No guilt about it either, because she wouldn’t sacrifice her own peace of mind and hopes on bringing Rufus back for Wyatt’s on Jessica. She didn’t owe either of them that.

But it could also mean Jessica was dead, or that Emma didn’t let her into the field. She felt a sudden tug, though, and followed it as usual, like reeling in a fish, pulling herself into the vision.

_Jessica stood on a beach, a gentle slope with rolling dunes. water lapping at her bare toes and the hem of her indigo blue skirt as they sank into the sand. Blond hair loose, stirring in the breeze like the cattails and grass growing on the dune crests, and the fringed edges of her grey shawl. Scanning the horizon for something…_

“Jiya,” Wyatt said lowly, snapping her out of it. “Uh--Lucy Parsons? I think we found her.” Blinking, coming back to the present, she turned, ducking under his arm to get out from against the lamppost, and looked where he pointed.

A woman had plunked down a stool right in the street, and climbed on it. Tall, coppery-skinned, standing straight as an arrow, she pointed to the trampled signs on the ground. The few demonstrators who hadn’t cleared out stuck around, moving in closer. “I was due to speak tonight at a worker’s gathering, but when I heard of this demonstration, it seems my voice was best added here. I have arrived to the usual spectacle: once again the policemen, the agents of the government appointed to protect and serve the people, abuse those who ask for the rights supposedly endowed by the founding principles of our nation.” Chin tipping up, she looked over the crowd, and the few pedestrians stopping to listen. “Why should we be surprised? So many of the unjust institutions which work so much misery and suffering to the masses have their root in government! They owe their entire existence to the power derived from government! Friends, would we not be better off were every law, every title deed, every court, and every police officer,” she jabbed an accusing finger towards the four blue-coated police eyeing her even now, “were abolished tomorrow?”

She had a low, clear voice that carried well, like the clarion call of a trumpet. Moving closer herself, Jiya kept an eye on the police, seeing they were holding off, at least for now. “The greatest lie told to us as Americans is that the government is truly one of the people, by the people, and most of all, _for_ the people.” Jiya had to dryly wonder how much had really changed between 1889 and 2018 on that score. “Because the government is one made of wealthy white men who hold none of your interests at heart. Never fool yourself into believing the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth,” Parsons continued. “So what use is the ballot-box? Give me a crate of dynamite and I’ll bring down every man in this city with a grotesque mansion, whose comfort is built upon the sweat, toil, and misery of countless men, women, and children enslaved by poverty, by brutal working conditions!”

“Well,” Wyatt said, tone awkward and surprised, “and I thought Garcia back in his heyday was an anarchist. She’s absolutely got him beat.”

“Can you really imagine Garcia giving public speeches, though?” Garcia was good at many things. She couldn’t readily believe soaring rhetoric was among them.

“Oh, hell no. Stirring calls to action, that’s totally Lucy’s department.” He paused. “Then again, the man did get some people on his side for what must have sounded like a totally crazy ‘Hey, let’s go steal a time machine and attack this secret cult’ plan. He must have had a good day.”

She gestured towards Parsons. “He wouldn’t need the stool, at least. Though if Lucy needed one, she could probably just sit on his shoulders.” 

Wyatt cracked up at that, and she couldn’t help but smile, feeling more of the warmth like they’d had before. Then he tensed. “Cops are on the move. Dammit. This crowd isn’t big enough anymore to fight them for her. I guess as Jess isn’t going after her, it’s OK if she’s in jail, she’s safe there? I mean, this isn’t gonna be another repeat of Alice Paul.”

She shot him a look that probably looked both annoyed and pitying. “Sure. She’s non-white, a woman, a political agitator, and it’s 1889 when police brutality was considered normal. No way she’ll be anything other than _just fine_ in custody.” 

He gave a sheepish smile and duck of his head. “Point taken.” 

“Besides, for all we know, Emma might come try to finish the job herself.”

He gave her a quick nod. “OK, then we…”

At that point, they were spared from having to formulate a plan because Lucy Parsons herself had hopped off the stool and was running full tilt in heeled boots and a long skirt, which Jiya knew was no mean feat. Some of the remaining demonstrators were covering her retreat, tying up the police who’d tried to move in on her. Running towards them, which felt like Lady Luck doing them a solid, and she stepped forward, gesturing to her and calling, “Mrs. Parsons, here! Let us help you!”, as she headed back into the alley.

Parsons paused, saw them, and hesitated for only a split second. “Who are you?” she demanded as she came up to them, catching her breath.

“We’re friends of the movement,” she said. “And there’s a plan afoot tonight to assassinate you.”

“We’re Pin--” Wyatt began.

“We’re private inquiry agents,” she abruptly cut Wyatt off. Claiming they were Pinkertons would likely be the worst thing possible right now, given the agency’s frequent use as hired protection for strikebreakers, and anti-union infiltration, in the post-Civil War decades. She’d read that Parsons’ husband had even believed the bomb thrown in Haymarket Square might have been fling by a Pinkerton trying to start a riot. She didn’t believe that, but it said a lot about the mistrust between labor organizers and Pinkertons. Good thing Kate Warne apparently had left the fold a few years back over that very issue, but it might still be touch-and-go trying to convince Parsons that Warne was safe.

“Private inquiry agents? And who, precisely, holds your leash?” Her dark eyes blazed with an intense fire. “Given I doubt most who earn their bread through extraordinary toil could afford such a thing?” 

Technically, after Mason Industries blew up, she, Lucy, and Connor were put on the books as contractors to DHS. Rufus had been too. Garcia had been off-books before the timeline switch involving his wife--couldn’t exactly admit the guy the Iranians supposedly broke out was on their payroll--and now he was NSA again. Wyatt was with the Army. _Basically we’re government up to our eyeballs, but that’s neither here nor there, right?_ “We took this on for conviction, not pay,” she answered back, keeping her tone as unruffled as she could, not giving her any satisfaction of offense at effectively being accused of being attack dogs for the rich.

Parsons might be onto something with some of her rhetoric calling out the injustices, but the woman was prickly as a porcupine, so she’d have to step carefully. “She’s right,” Wyatt said.

Parsons studied them. “And you are--”

She had a flash of inspiration. Parsons herself was a brown-skinned woman, who’d been married to a white man. From the papers, she claimed to be part Mexican, part American Indian, though looking at her features and from some of what other papers had said, Jiya thought it was equally likely she was a black woman with some white ancestry. Much easier to not admit to being black in this day and age, though, particularly so soon after the Civil War. And here they were, a white man and a brown woman. Apologies to Rufus and Jessica, but she was going to run with it, hope it struck a chord with Parsons that let down some of her guard. “Nora and Nick Charles.” Might as well give a nod to a detective duo while they were at it. She’d watched the whole Thin Man marathon once on TCM when she’d had the flu and loved it. “Let us help you,” she repeated. “We have a safe place for you to stay tonight.”

“I’m not afraid to die for the cause of anarchy,” Parsons said with an imperious tone. “I wouldn’t be the first.” 

“I know. Your husband was one of them. But if you’re murdered in an alley by an assassin sent by those who want to silence you, that doesn’t do you or your cause much good.” She gave Parsons a grim smile. “If you’re so willing to be another anarchist martyr, I imagine you’d prefer to do it very publicly, mm?” Her eyes fell to the gold necklace Parsons wore, with a charm in the shape of a gallows.

Wyatt shifted uncomfortably. She wondered if he was thinking of suicide bombers and the like that he’d encountered in the Middle East, trying to dislodge Western forces. Probably. Though plenty of homegrown fanatics too in America. Easy to talk about bombs and the rage of oppression and being willing to commit acts of stark violence to destroy the tyrants. Nice speech, but the reality was a lot more messy than that. All that senseless violence spawned was more blood, more pain, more death, more violence. 

She didn’t disagree with Wyatt’s discomfort, but darkness was fast falling, and she didn’t want to risk running into Emma out there in the night, particularly an Emma presumably pissed off by Lucy and Garcia spiriting Jane Addams away from her. “Let’s get you to safety,” she said. Putting ex-Pinkerton Kate Warne, Jane Addams--who she understood had been more of the charity and social work school of things--and Parsons, the utter firebrand, all in one room could be interesting. 

“I’ll call a cab,” Wyatt said finally, heading out from the alley.


	20. 3x05: Addams Family Values (Garcia: Chicago, Illinois, January 1889)

They’d made the plan, and there was no time to waste. He spared only a single quick glance over his shoulder, seeing Lucy talking to Jane Addams. He’d have to trust her to do the job and get Addams out of here, because if he kept nervously looking in that direction, it’d be firing up a signal rocket for Emma. Pulse quickening, he forced himself to calm down. Nothing screwed up a mission like rushing in impulsively, keyed up on adrenaline. Besides, with Emma, the calmer he could appear, the better, given her love of playing people’s emotions like her own personal windchimes. One little tap and it set the whole thing shivering and rattling. He’d fallen for it in the past. Not this time.

Knowing how much he stuck out in the crowd, and that she’d see him easily soon enough, it was better that he be the bait, and let Lucy slip out unnoticed. Not to mention while he’d bet Emma wanted to toy with him, she tended to eye him with condescending amusement, considered him a toothless wolf at this point, resting too much on her having played him. Lucy might be another story. That one was acutely personal for Emma. There was some part of her that wouldn’t rest easy in her control of Rittenhouse until she got rid of the supposed “rightful” heir.

He repeated what he suspected had been Jessica’s ploy back at the brewing riot--look around intently, as if he hadn’t seen his quarry yet. As for Jessica, he carefully shut the door on that topic too. He’d left it to Lucy, and then she’d given it over to Jiya and Wyatt where, he had to admit, the decision probably rested all along. No time to get distracted right now.

He bounced his glance over Emma, then zereoed back in as if he’d just seen her. Making a beeline for her, he caught her arm, steering her out onto the dance floor, away from the double doors of the entrance where Lucy and Addams would have to go to slip away and escape. “Ah, Emma, it’s been a while,” he said. “We should chat.”

Addams must have been hidden in the crowd already, with Emma ever seeing her that she would indulge in the chance to try to tear into him again, and he hid a victorious smile at that. Lucy had done good work, no surprise there. “Flying solo tonight?” She raised an eyebrow. “I’m surprised they’ll let you off the leash alone. I’m also surprised you’re not busy being Lucy’s pet as usual.” 

“We ended up with a list of places to go,” he said flippantly. “See, we can time travel, but cloning? That could get a little _messy_. Guess I hit the winner on our list.” He gave her a smile that had set so many people on edge before, the kind of smile that from a big, broadly built man spoke of the promise that he could take someone out and barely pause in what he was doing. “Speaking of pets, where’s Jessica?”

“Back home. Turns out growing a kid takes a lot out of you.” She looked him up and down, the smile taking on an edge of cruel self-satisfaction. “But you remember that, don’t you? She’s having a little girl herself.”

He thought of the Adriatic then, the sunlight on shimmering green waters, bright and beautiful. He’d swum and boated there as a child, but beyond the calm, the depths hid so many secrets, so much history. He willed himself to be like that. _Give her nothing. You gave her too much last time._ He’d sated the edge of his rage with her in 1919 by getting the drop on her and threatening to kill her, but she’d barely blinked. Besides, he’d handed her another knife in doing so. She knew how pissed off he was at having trusted her. He wasn’t making that mistake again.

But it was almost impossible to effortlessly stuff away the memory of Lorena’s pregnancy. The hopes, the fears, the excitement, how amazing it all seemed to him. It took her a couple of years of pushing, first gently, then more insistently, for him to get off the fence about having kids, to actually talk about the fears. He remembered a hot September night, lying on the couch in the Baltimore house with his head in her lap, her fingers carding slowly through his hair. _I’ve seen you around kids, Garcia, ever since we met at the medical camp. You’re sweet. You know you look big and scary so you go out of your way to put them at ease. You’re definitely not your dad. I’m not asking if you’re scared. I’m kinda scared too. Anybody should be daunted by this choice, you know? But...what I’m asking is, do you want this?_ So they’d put aside the birth control and tried. It took nearly a year, and they’d almost given up, were ready to assume it just wasn’t meant to be. Iris had been their miracle. Getting Lorena peanut butter constantly, and she’d had the most absurd craving for mangoes. Remembering her by turns radiant and exhausted, remembering her bone weary but jubilant as she held Iris for the first time, laughing and crying all at once.

For so long, it was like Lorena and Iris were a single pain, twined together in an inseparable rope that had bound him, strangled him. Then Lucy had come along, the real Lucy he’d come to know, and as he started to fall for her, that slowly started to unpick the two. Emma bringing Lorena back to life, his seeing her happy and living a life totally separate from Rittenhouse and all its horrors, continued to drive the wedge. At this point, he could see full well how he stood poised on the very edge, ready to take the plunge, do his best with Lucy and hope they could make something wonderful together. 

The loss of Lorena had mostly healed over, though it would be yet another scar. But Iris was a wound still bleeding freely. He suspected even without Emma’s meddling that would have been true. Losing a child was different from losing a spouse. And here Emma was, mashing that button with merciless glee. He’d take her down for Iris, and for his Lorena who he would never see again. But damned if he was giving her the satisfaction this time of seeing the pain that lingered.

So he smiled even wider and looked down at her, determined to keep his nerves and will cast from iron, unbreakable and unshakeable. “I’m just wondering how long before you turn on Jessica Logan too.”

“Oh, I’d say it’s worth keeping her alive. Wyatt’s never going to give up on her.” She gave another smirk. “Especially since it looks like you’ve cockblocked his fallback plan with Lucy. Congratulations, Flynn, I didn’t think you had it in you to ever fuck anyone after your dear sweet Lorena.”

It stung a bit because for so long, he hadn’t imagined it either. Hadn’t imagined there could be a life beyond vengeance, and that he couldn’t distract himself from the mission in those two years of waiting, no matter how much he sometimes hurt with loneliness. He wouldn’t have been able to get close enough to anyone to want them. Then after stealing the Mothership, he’d known with bone-deep certainty that he’d given himself entirely to the cause, that the monster he’d embraced becoming deserved nothing. Not love, not mercy--and yet, there Lucy had been all the same, challenging him but also refusing to give up on him. It stung, but he struck back, like swatting the mosquito. “Does it hurt your ego that I wasn’t interested in you? Your attempts at seduction were, ah, less than subtle.” 

It wasn’t like she’d shown up naked or anything. But she’d made it clear that if he was interested, she wouldn’t turn him down, talked shyly about comfort and loneliness. At the time he’d chalked it up to her being a nerd who’d been stuck alone for a dozen years. Of course she’d be awkward. Of course she’d been lonely. But had he been the man he’d been before those years on the run cast him as a brutal and blunt weapon, if he’d been the man he was now, with room in him for sympathy and gentleness, he might have been able to feel something for that false Emma. Because he’d come to love Lucy, also alone and awkward and brave and determined, who’d stopped running from the fight and turned to face it. Had he been less closed off, he might have grown to a place where that supposed allyship between them became something more, where he might want to comfort her, and in doing so, find some comfort himself. He never thought he’d be grateful that he’d been such a steely bastard who’d done his best to not feel anything except a determined rage, but apparently it kept him from making one more massive mistake that could have hurt even more people. 

“Operational necessity.” She shrugged, shoulders back, head tilted slightly back with a proud jut to her chin. “Admittedly, it might not have been terrible. You’re not bad looking. Though I was worried you’d call me ‘Lorena’ and then blubber all over me afterwards. Hope you didn’t do it to poor little Lucy.”

The tide of partygoers ebbed and surged around them at the edge of the dance floor, their conversations providing the dull roar like crashing waves. But neither of them was paying any attention to that. “Sadly for you, I like my lovers a little less cold-blooded and sociopathic. Given you can execute a man you’re fucking without a second thought, good call on my part?” Perhaps getting arrested was the best thing that could have happened to him, loathe as he was to admit it--and he damn well would never give any version of Denise Christopher the satisfaction--because otherwise he imagined he would have been just one more tally in her body count. Probably on the mission to go deal with Ben Cahill’s assassins’ parents, and save Lorena and Iris. Or deal with Ben Cahill himself, of necessity prior to 1982 and Lucy’s conception, and he was glad he hadn’t faced that dilemma, given how ruthless he’d been willing to be about Ethan. 

“Nicholas?” She rolled her eyes, shaking her head in exasperation. “That Edwardian blowhard? I mean, you want to talk about being bad in bed,” she let out a low whistle. “I used him to try to get ahead in Rittenhouse. But don’t pretend like you’re sad I took that fossil out, or Carol Preston. And like I said, why do I keep doing your work for you?”

“Because if not for me you’d be playing Little House on the Prairie still, and shitting in an outhouse.” He gave her another of those feral grins. “You’re welcome for that. Because let’s not pretend Rittenhouse gave a crap about you until you handed over the Mothership.”

He had realized of late was that yes, he’d unknowingly been the instrument of unleashing Emma on the present, and the past. But given in this timeline Mason Industries had retrieved her, and Rittenhouse “kidnapped” her, it didn’t seem like he needed to be involved. It became one more pang of guilt. 

The thing that never fit was how he couldn’t understand _why_ Lucy, that Lucy who’d found him in Brazil, would have put that information in the journal. Why had she led him to Emma? How could she have wanted him to bring a monster into the war?

Unless she’d known something. Known that he would finally feel rejected and thwarted and hounded by Lucy one too many times, and finally give up on her. Known that he felt Anthony slipping away too. Known that he would want to seek another ally, because he couldn’t do it alone, and he’d been so heartsick that Lucy had proven to be nothing like she’d promised him. Known that for some reason, it needed to be Emma that he found and brought back, setting everything in motion, but _why_?

He would never see that Lucy again to ask her. She hadn’t been the one who’d popped into the bunker right after they lost Rufus. She’d been about the same age, but gentler, less blunt-as-a-hammer battlefield Ripley and more avenging angel, fierce enough to kill a Rittenhouse agent without blinking, and yet kind enough to be gentle with his pain. He had to imagine somehow, in all the alterations both great and small, her timeline got erased. Maybe even her handing him that journal had done it. But he could never ask her for sure, and his Lucy, the woman he loved, couldn’t be held accountable for what another version of her had written. He’d had to come to that realization and accept it somewhere around the time he’d started to love her, when she challenged him again in the Gunther Hotel with some of that old defiant conviction that he hadn’t seen in months.

He’d thought about it long and hard lately, and come across what he felt had to be the truth. The Lucy who wrote the journal he’d carried sent him to rescue Emma because it meant he’d spent several months in Emma’s company. Because after she’d exposed her true self after he was arrested, then he could spend some of that six months in prison obsessively putting pieces together, given nothing but time. Because now he knew her, her ploys, her weaknesses, her blind spots. He knew her in a way none of the others did. He knew her in a way his doppelganger from this timeline, the man who’d never loved and lost Lorena and gone half-mad with revenge fueled by grief and a magic book, the NSA agent with the clean record, hadn’t and couldn’t.

He had to believe he needed that insight to win this fight, and that Lucy had been aware it would make a difference. That meant maybe even Emma’s ploy to bring Lorena back had served some greater cause than twisting the knife in his still-aching heart, because the more he stepped back and looked at the big picture, he had to believe they had been brought here for a reason.

Their original counterparts here hadn’t had some of the essential pieces to get the job done. He didn’t have that instinctive psychological knowledge of Emma. Jiya hadn’t gained her time-trance ability. Lucy hadn’t been forged as tough, or as able to see the grey shades in things, by having both him and Wyatt there and openly opposing Rittenhouse from the start, rather than protected by only one soldier and constantly confronting another who kept insisting he wasn’t the enemy he seemed. Wyatt--it was Jessica’s resurrection and recruitment by Rittenhouse that was his crucible. Rufus--well, when they got him back, presumably they’d see if there was some difference there that this Rufus had that their own didn’t. 

What had happened to all of them was meant to be, because it was apparently the only way they could have gotten even this far, let alone win. It comforted him somewhat to believe that he couldn’t have been a different man and still succeeded. It didn’t take away the suffering of the last four years, or the consequences of the choices he’d made, but it gave it context that made it all more bearable. That didn’t mean he was off the hook for the decisions he’d made during his _burn it all down_ period. But he knew the worst in himself now, in a way that the man who’d been afraid to be a father hadn’t. So strangely, there was no more fear now. He’d chosen who to be, and he would be the man he should, for the sake of the mission, for the memory of Iris and Lorena, and for the sake of being worthy to stand by Lucy’s side. 

Recovering, scanning the crowd, there was no sign of Lucy and Addams. They must have escaped, and he felt some of the anxious pressure in his chest easing at that. Hiding it from Emma, and hearing the orchestra tuning up and preparing for another waltz, recovering, he held a hand out, gesturing around them. It had been at least five minutes already in his estimation, but he could try to buy them more time if it was needed. “So, since I assume you’re waiting here to murder Jane Addams and I’m here to save her, and it doesn’t look like she’s showing up, seems we’re at an impasse?” 

“Well, either that or we continue hanging at the edge of the dance floor like a couple of middle schoolers and get people to stare at us. Want to get get me a drink? Don’t suppose you want to dance?” He could dance with her, true. He’d learned from Lucy well enough that he could take Emma for a turn on the floor and buy even more time. Besides, if he could try to justify killing the Apollo 11 astronauts as a necessity, did he really have the right to be upset about having to endure this? But he’d cherish the memory of that dance with Lucy, a few carefree minutes taken away from the mission to simply be, to enjoy each other, to forget the war. As he’d told her, there needed to be more than stolen moments, there needed to be definite space for something inviolable. Something in him balked at the idea of sullying one of the sweetest things he’d had in years by letting someone he hated to the depths of his soul take it from him. No, he’d thrown absolutely everything into the mission, holding nothing back safely, for too long. That had been a mistake. He’d find another way. 

“Really?” He tilted his head aside, staring at her in openly mocking amusement. “You’re not serious.”

“Afraid it would get back to Mistress Lucy?”

If he’d revealed too much to her in those months in Mexico City, she’d handed him some weapons too. It was Lucy who’d shown him the way with her taunts of Emma being still barely more than a glorified cabbie to Rittenhouse, and Emma’s own words in 1919, her chip on her shoulder about being self-made. He’d been in too much of a tailspin to use them, too caught up in getting his own head straight. But not anymore. He felt these days like he was on the firmest ground he’d been in years. “I suppose a cornfed farm girl from Iowa probably doesn’t waltz anyway. You might want to learn if you’re going to keep going to the past. Lots of useful skills you probably don’t know.” 

He saw the spark of rage in her pale hazel eyes. “All I need to make my mark on the past is a handful of bullets, Flynn.”

He made certain the smile he gave her fairly reeked of smirking condescension. That was what he’d thought too, and it caught him aback to realize how arrogant she really was. She wouldn’t learn from her mistakes, let alone his. She wouldn’t learn from anyone else around her, because he suspected her insecurity wouldn’t let her admit to not knowing something, not being in complete control. Reminded him of Wyatt, reminded him uncomfortably of his stupid teenage self. She was a one-trick pony: lie, deceive, backstab, and taunt. She did that damn well, but once she’d done that, what did she have? She wasn’t nearly as powerful as he’d made her out to be in his frustrated guilt and rage.

But yes, she was bright, and ruthless, and dangerous. He also wouldn’t make the mistake of underestimating her or the situation. Rittenhouse had gone on so long that even killing her where she stood, trying to find the Mothership and bring it back to 2018, probably wouldn’t do it. She had to have trained at least one more pilot to have gone to save Tim Wrangell, and he wouldn’t be surprised if Rittenhouse had the damn time machine plans to boot thanks to Connor handing them the keys to Mason Industries. If he killed Emma and thought that solved it, a year or two from now they’d probably be facing a new outbreak of the latest iteration of Rittenhouse. And perhaps unlike Emma, they’d learn to be subtle, to keep to the shadows, and to work behind the scenes. It could be far worse than facing her. She was violent and determined, but she was also obvious. 

He’d learned through painful experience that there was no single knockout blow for Rittenhouse. They’d have to keep facing them, whittling them down through a war of attrition. They had the junkheap Lifeboat, true, but it was rebuilt and upgraded, they had the nuclear battery, they’d have the Lifeline. Most of all, they had the much better team. They’d worked together, made themselves and each other and the team they’d built stronger by it. Lucy, Jiya, even Wyatt, and Rufus: he’d trust any one of them with his life at this point.

“And I’ve got my mark on the future too,” she said, a triumphant gleam in her eyes. She reached down and patted her stomach, pressing the voluminous folds of fabric in enough for him to see what might have been the slight swell of pregnancy. Was he imagining it? “Nicholas wasn’t worth much, but he did manage one useful thing.”

She was dangerous, because she’d caught him unaware with that, and he felt like he’d gotten clipped right on the chin, reeling and dizzy. Was she lying? If she wasn’t, he wanted to turn his face up to the ceiling and yell accusingly at God that this wasn’t right, this wasn’t fair, how the hell could he take away his little girl forever and allow two monsters like Emma Whitmore and Nicholas Keynes have a child? She saw it, and pressed her advantage. “If this one’s a girl, maybe I’ll have to name her Amy Iris. Would you like that, Flynn?”

He could put a bullet right between her eyes. It would be the work of only a moment, and some insane, raging part of him said it would be worth it to be arrested and hanged here in 1889 for committing murder in a very public place. Then reason barged in and insisted, _That’s probably exactly what she wants. The moment you pull your gun, because it’s going to be a bit of a chore getting it out from under that vest, she’s going to scream and play the scared helpless damsel in distress. You get arrested, the team has to leave you, all because you couldn’t keep your temper under control. Shut up, lock it down, and move on._ He looked at her and said as calmly as he could, saying it sincerely, “I really pity that child having a monster like you as a mother.”

She kept her hand on her belly, smirking at him, thinking she had him where she wanted him, thinking she knew him. “I’ve got five months to go, so I imagine a good Catholic boy like you won’t get any ideas about killing me until then.”

He stared at her, putting as much stark promise of vengeance into the look as he could. “If that’s your hope of mercy, Emma, Rittenhouse really shouldn’t have killed Lorena. I’ve never been a good Catholic. She was.” And he expected even Lorena would advise killing Emma if it served the mission. Being in medicine meant a certain ruthlessness. They sometimes had to harm in order to heal. She would have appreciated that the promise of one child’s life wasn’t worth the fate of millions, though she would probably have tried to find another way if possible, because she’d cared about people. Right then, he hated Emma even more for making her own child into nothing more than attempted leverage. 

He gathered his thoughts together as best he could, holding fast for the moment. Time to make his exit. Let her think she’d won, because her underestimating any of the team would serve him well, but if she kept going, he really might kill her where she stood and jeopardize everything. Half-turning to the man next to him, he said lowly, reaching out to give him a friendly clap on the shoulder, “Excuse me. Can I ask you a favor, please?”

Deep violet-blue eyes studied him carefully, expression friendly and open. “Is something wrong?”

“My name is Georg von Trapp. I’m here tonight with my wife’s friend. The red-haired lady just over there. I escorted her here tonight because my own wife is at home, well…in a delicate condition, you see. And I’ve just gotten word one of the children is seriously ill, so I need to go home immediately. Maria told me that Emmaline and I should...she so wanted her friend to come and enjoy this evening, and I agreed, but...could I impose on you and your dear wife,” he nodded towards the woman at the man’s side, petite and plump in her rose pink gown, “to take care of her?” 

She stepped forward, laid a reassuring hand on his arm. “Certainly. Think nothing of it, sir.”

“She doesn’t really dance, but I know she’d feel so much better having company for the evening. I’m so sorry to impose--” 

“It’s perfectly all right,” he said, giving his wife a soft smile.

He turned back to Emma. “Emmaline, dear, these fine people have agreed to look after you while I go home.” He indicated his new friends. “Enjoy the evening, please, and Maria so regrets she couldn’t be here to give you the greeting she would have wanted.”

He saw the flicker of rage in her eyes, recognizing he’d caught her in a cage, at least for a little while. A woman in 1889 wouldn’t be able to kick up a fuss here on the dance floor without causing a huge scene, and further delay to her. He didn’t doubt she’d try to extract herself as quickly as possible--the excuse of going to the bathroom, probably--but with any luck he’d bought himself another ten minutes at least before she could safely do it. That was enough to get away and not have her follow him.

She tipped her head to him slightly, almost an acknowledgment of a point scored, but the raging anger in her eyes promised he’d pay for it. He smiled, making it look as unconcerned as he could, and since he was playing European nobility, he bowed to her with excessive, almost Prussian formality. “ _Jebi se_ ,” he told her, certain she and the couple he’d roped into looking after her didn’t speak Croatian. 

He got his coat from the check as quickly as possible, and then headed outside, found a cab in as much of a rush as he could without his haste sticking out too much. Giving the address for Jane Addams, he glanced back at the entrance of the Palmer House, not spying Emma in her green-and-bronze dress.

After they turned the corner, he sat back in the cab, listening to the clopping sound of the horse’s hooves and the rattle of the wheels against the half-frozen street. With the adrenaline fading, he felt how his right shoulder ached in the piercing January cold. No surprise given what a mess it had been for the surgeons, and how the healing was only four months in. But it made him huddle up tighter in his coat, arms folded tightly across his chest, leaning against the wall of the cab. None of them had escaped unscathed, not even physically at this point. He had the wound from Wyatt all the way back at the _Hindenburg_ , the first time he’d seen, to his shock that the journal wasn’t infallible. The stab wound in his side, the shot to his chest, all adding to the lengthy list from a colorful career at war. He remembered the scar on Lucy’s left arm, easily visible in her tank tops when they trained in fighting, the knife wound from where she’d been moments from dying in Salem, and he’d been terrified there was no chance he could make a shot like that with a shitty seventeeth-century muzzleloader. Remembered the small scar on her right brow from the beating she’d received in Chinatown. Feeling absurdly close to tears too for a few heartbeats, and he couldn’t say exactly why--fuck, sometimes he was so close to feeling OK, and then one more thing would hit him, another wound, another shot out of nowhere. Eventually the moment passed. He should have figured he wouldn’t get away from Emma unscathed. But he could take it. 

Paying the cabbie, sparing a pat on the neck and a fond murmur for the midnight-black gelding in the traces, he headed up to Warne’s rooms. No surprise that Wyatt answered the door, pistol at the ready, just in case it was Emma instead of him. “Just like the old days,” he said flippantly, pushing the muzzle of the pistol down with one hand as he moved past Wyatt. “Gang’s all here?”

“Yeah,” Lucy replied, perched on a shabby couch patterned with cabbage roses, a cup of tea in hand. The entire place looked that way, nothing in it calculated in a way meant to impress or awe visitors, thinking only of comfort and ease and lack of pretense. It fit with the woman he'd met in 1861 who made no apologies for who she was, who wouldn't hold back her formidable capability only to pander to the existing paradigm.

He glanced around, seeing Lucy, an older Warne, Addams, a black woman with a proud set to her shoulders and head who must have been Parsons, Jiya, and then Wyatt closing the door behind him. “Where’s Jessica?”

Jiya was the one who answered. “She...we talked about it and she’s going to go back. She’s spying for us.” 

He stared at her, incredulous for a moment. “And you believed her?” He could think of a dozen ways that could go wrong, and yet, Jessica had seemed so sincere. But he’d expected she’d be coming back with them.

She stared at him, unwilling to budge. “Yes. We gave her nothing if she actually is lying to us. And I’m not going to turn down a chance at insider information.” Well, that was a new development, but aware of the rest of their audience, he held his tongue for now.

“Spying?” Parsons said suspiciously. “What are you lot, Pinkertons?” She jerked a thumb towards Warne. “I know she was, but she walked away from them.”

Lucy sighed, putting her teacup on its saucer on the little table beside the sofa. “Not like we can lie about this--Agent Warne’s already suspicious.”

“I’m an investigator, of course I notice things.” Warne said with a cautious nod, sitting down on a chaise lounge. “You, sir,” she gestured to Wyatt, “weren’t there. But the three of you look exactly like the supposed private inquiry agents I met on the train the night Rebel agents tried to assassinate President-Elect Lincoln. Gerald and Lucinda Flynn,” her eyes traveling between Lucy and Garcia, “and their friend Juliette de Marigny,” flicking a quick indicative gesture towards Jiya, sitting beside Lucy on the sofa. Her brown eyes dared any of them to try to deny it. “That was in 1861, and not a one of you looks much older. Certainly not twenty-eight years.” 

Screw it. No way out except honesty. ”Truth? We’re time travelers from the year 2018.”

“You’re joking,” Addams said.

Speaking in French, Lucy told Addams, “You learned French at school. So I could tell you that you spent most of your childhood with a back injury that limited you until your brother-in-law did an operation. You wanted to get a college degree, because you love and believe in learning, but your father kept holding you back from it. You’ll never marry, and there’s a reason for that. Because some of it’s being married to your work, but also the fact you and your friend Eleanor are in love, never confirmed whether you’re lovers--there’s nothing wrong with that, though, either way. I’ve been in love with women. I would never judge that.”

She swapped to German, glancing at Parsons. “You speak German because most of the labor agitators in Chicago are German, and you and Albert were deeply involved in their community, yes? So I could tell you that you claim to be of Mexican and Indian heritage, because it’s enough of a struggle getting people to listen to a woman, even a martyr’s widow. And you know how much harder it would be to get them to listen to a woman named Lucia Carter Parsons who was born a slave in Virginia.” He’d read Parsons’ biography, earlier this year. It had amused him a bit to read about another revolutionary Lucy. 

She switched back to English. “And I could tell you that you’re both extraordinary and fascinating and unconventional. You’re women who care so much for people trapped in poverty. You’re women who fight when the world tells you that you should be silent. And that the things you’ll do will change America, which is why we needed to keep you safe tonight. We’re time travelers, and we’re here fighting a group who’s trying to change history.”

It was Warne who finally broke the heavy resulting silence, both Parsons and Addams looking stunned. “I believe it. I saw them in 1861. They saved Mr. Lincoln, and warned me that--I was supposed to die in 1868, wasn’t I?”

“Yes,” Lucy told her.

Addams flinched first. “What is it that we’re supposed to do that--changes so much?”

“I don’t know that we can tell you,” Jiya said, oddly gentle. “Some of it you have to find out for yourself.” It was one thing to give Mileva Marić a play-by-play to cover the gap left by Einstein’s murder, but in this case, they were simply helping keep the steady course. Addams and Parsons would have made those great strides forward anyway. 

That was true, but then, he’d always played a little more fast and loose with history than some of the others. Besides, she’d have mellowed in a few decades anyway. “You fight for working people, and that’s good, but here’s a hint: you might want to ease off the ‘firing off explosives and murdering the rich is the answer’ rhetoric,” he told Parsons. 

Parsons shook her head, a dark curl falling beside her ear, dark eyes flashing with anger. She looked him up and down, sitting there dressed in black tie fresh from a wealthy Palmer House bash, and obviously counted him as some rich know-nothing do-nothing. “Did our nation free the Negro in bondage because they asked sweetly? Does anyone in power ever give it up willingly?”

“George Washington,” Lucy pointed out. “Although...ah...yeah, he’s problematic in other ways, so...” She gave a sheepish smile. 

Parsons ignored her, staring him down with open challenge in her expression. “When appeals to justice fail, as they did with my husband, what other recourse is there except violence?” 

Wryly, he had to admire her style, and the courage of her brazen unwillingness as a woman of color to take the easy route and shut up and listen to a white man. Picking his words with care, he tried to explain without condescending. “What happened to your husband was wrong. He wasn’t involved with the bomb in the Haymarket. I get it.” Albert Parsons more or less ended up on trial and executed because he had been there speaking in the Haymarket, and because he advocated the anarchist revolution, equally loud in the call for armed resistance and violence as his wife. “These people we’re fighting, they murdered my wife. My daughter. And it made me determined to fight back. To make their loss count for something. The things I did to fight back against them...I’ve been there. I’ve said ‘Do whatever it takes’. I’ve said ‘Destroying everything around them is the only way.’ You want to talk about dynamite? I’ve _thrown_ that crate of dynamite, over and over and over. I’ve done things you probably can’t even imagine. You’re right. Before you, for those that come after you, the system rarely changes without standing up and demanding your rights. Sometimes with violence. By all means, blow up the damn machines in factories if need be. But indiscriminate killing and saying I had to destroy the whole system got me nowhere. It _doesn’t work_ , and all it does is make people turn away from you and what you want to do, no matter how right the cause is.”

“So you want me to sit with her,” Parsons said, nodding to Addams derisively, “knitting tea kettle covers and telling the suffering poor that all they really need is to rely upon charitable hearts, rather than seizing their own rights and dignity.”

“Didn’t we learn from the French Revolution?” Addams retorted. “Blood running in the streets, heads paraded through the streets on...on sticks? Do you really want to see a guillotine set up in the Haymarket Square, Mrs. Parsons?”

“The French people seized their freedom against a system of rich people who didn’t give a single damn about them,” Parsons answered, tone cool as a cucumber. “Clearly it worked.”

“And we Americans seized ours with much less terror and destruction,” Addams shot back at her. “Besides, the French crawled back to a monarch eagerly enough when Napoleon came along because everything was such a terrible mess. Which plunged Europe into an awful war, mind you.”

 _Spoiler alert, there’s an even worse one coming in twenty-five years._ “You both agree,” Lucy cut in, “that the poor aren’t there because they’re morally deficient. That the system keeps them in poverty. That their rights aren’t protected. Both of you want to see them have rights and dignity and fair treatment and a livable wage, and you’re two powerfully motivated women. Ms. Addams has the means and the connections. Mrs. Parsons is one hell of a speaker. I mean, you’ll be cooperating on some things by 1915. If you could work together now, overcome your differences on how to handle the labor question, you could do even greater things than what we know about you from the history books.”

He tried to not smile, because that was quintessential Lucy, showing her faith in the best in people, trying to bring the brightest possible outcome. Addams eyed Parsons. “I’d be interested to hear what you propose,” she offered tentatively.

Parsons’ expression said that she still probably thought Addams was a soft-hearted do-gooder, but she glanced over at him, studying him for a moment as if weighing what he’d said. “The division in the movement isn’t helping, it’s true.”

Warne looked both of them over, standing between them. “These people asked me to protect your lives tonight, and I shall do that. But I’m willing,” she offered, “to assist you both. You’re welcome to meet here to discuss things, or whatever else I can reasonably do. I left because it was no longer the Pinkerton agency I joined in my youth.” She pursed her lips, shaking her head angrily. “It’s one thing to chase down thieves, gangsters, and assassins. But it’s not criminal for ordinary workers to demand to be treated as...as human beings.”

A reformer, a firebrand, and an ageing ex-detective: it could make for one hell of a team. That seemed like a good place to leave it, and so they said their goodbyes. This was strangely the hard part--walking away and trusting to history to sort it all out. Jiya and Wyatt headed out the door, and as Lucy headed for the door, she stopped and took Warne’s hands in hers for a second. “Thank you again,” she said, giving her warmest smile.

He looked down at his hand, seeing the thin white gold band there on his finger, the small nicks and scratches from the wear of years. He’d been a different man once: Lorena’s husband, Iris’ father, the co-founder of Illyrian Securities--and thank God they hadn’t become a pitbull for hire like the Pinkertons--an NSA asset. He’d had that life torn away from him and become something else: fugitive, terrorist, ruthless avenger, reading that cryptic journal as his guide, trying so hard to be dead inside and do what he thought needed to be done. Then he’d met Lucy and changed again. This time, he had chosen the man he’d become, walking away from the worst of what he’d been, while rediscovering the best, becoming smarter, stronger, tougher, more resilient. He had friends now, friends he believed wouldn’t abandon him were he to be captured, friends who might well fight for his life like Rufus’ should he get killed. He wouldn’t have believed that was possible six months ago. He wouldn’t have believed that he and Lucy were possible. All he had to do was choose, again, the path he wanted to take, the man he wanted so desperately to be. 

He stood, heading over to where Addams stood at the window, looking out into the winter night, looking lost in thought. “Looks like you didn’t get the chance to get any donations tonight, Ms. Addams.”

She shrugged, obviously not too bothered by that loss, or even by the potential assassination. Tough as nails--she’d have to be, in order to accomplish the things she would in the future, to fight the battles she’d taken on for those who couldn’t. Parsons might think she was soft, but he wasn’t fooled. “Don’t fret. There’ll be other chances. I don’t dissuade so easily.”

Slipping the ring off his finger, his fingers closed tightly over it, holding the metal circle in his palm. He could picture the inscription in it clearly. Lorena had been so practical, so straightforward, that she hadn’t wanted anything overly sentimental. No poetry, no Croatian avowals of love. It was enough for her to have their initials, and their wedding date: _LCV to GMF 22/04/06_. They’d had eight years as husband and wife. So much of it good, some of it bad, and his greatest regret was not making more time, for trusting that the future would be there. Because if anyone was going to die early, of course it would be him, given the risks of his job. He wouldn’t make that mistake again. 

He thought of the Lorena in Baltimore, surrounded by her kids and her husband, living a life far away from the poison of Rittenhouse. She wasn’t his Lorena, no, but there was a Lorena Valaitis alive in this world, doing good, fighting for the poor and their health and their rights. And his Lorena would always be with him in some way. He could imagine her rolling her eyes and saying, _I love you, Garcia, but for someone claiming he doesn’t have much use for the Church, sometimes you really are incredibly determined to make yourself a martyr. Go be happy._ He couldn’t help but smile at that. _Have a good life, **draga**. I’ll do my best to do the same._ “Then maybe you’ll let me be your first donor.” He took Addams’ hand, turning it over, putting the ring in her palm.

She looked at it, then up at him, eyes wide and startled. “Don’t you want to keep this?”

“I could. I’d put it away somewhere, and come across it occasionally. But I don’t need it to remember my wife, or our little girl. And Lorena believed in what you want to do with Hull House--that’s going to be your settlement house. I’d rather see her live on that way than a bit of metal hiding in my drawer. She’d rather see that too. I know it’s not much of a donation, but…”

She shook her head, looking at him with that gaze that Lorena had, the one telling him he was being an idiot. “Dear sir, it’s a remarkable donation.” She closed her fingers over the ring, holding onto it tightly. “What was her name?”

“Lorena Flynn.”

“Then I’ll be honored to consider her as my first donor.”

Something eased inside his heart at that, and he wasn’t sure whether it was a burden lifted, or something finally lost or let go. Maybe it was a bit of both. He felt Lucy there behind him, felt her hand slip into his, holding tightly to his now-bare left hand. At least this time he’d given it, rather than having it taken from him. He’d had to do it eventually, and it felt right that this be how he put one more piece of Lorena in the past so that he could have a future, but that didn’t mean it didn’t feel so strange anyway. As ever, there Lucy was, giving him some much-needed strength in that moment. She must have seen or heard it, come back in to see what was delaying him. Some part of him was glad she’d seen it. _I choose you, do you know that? Every single day, in a thousand ways, I’ll choose you. That’s what love is. She’s my past. You---I hope to God--you’re my future._ “Thank you.” 

They headed out, and she let go his hand only so they could pull their gloves back on before heading out into the winter night. He didn’t look at the pale band of skin on his finger. He’d get used to it eventually, but right now, it was a little too fresh. She leaned her head on his shoulder on the nearly-empty streetcar back to Englewood, and he put an arm around her, drawing her close. 

“That was fun,” he said, voice low enough so that only she could hear. “We should go dancing again. Preferably not on a mission.” Parts of him were still healing, but he suspected letting himself embrace this and move forward, however slowly, would only help that. 

“Are you asking me on a date?” Teasing him lightheartedly, given she’d asked him that before, and he’d equivocated like crazy, neither of them ready to commit to that just yet.

“Yes. We can go do social activities in each others’ company and eat food. I believe that’s called a ‘going on a date’ where we come from. Or do you want me to pay court to you, since it’s 1889?”

“Please. Throw back even further. I expect nothing less than you asking for a token of my esteem to inspire you in the coming fight, composing songs in my honor, and chastely worshipping me from afar.”

“I think that other you gave me that token--the journal?” If he’d been a knight, he’d been in very, very tarnished armor. But she believed in him all the same.

Her fingers tightened in his. “I guess so.”

“I’ll work on the songs.” He almost joked that would involve getting her father’s permission to marry her, but stopped himself in time. “I’d end up asking how many cows and chickens would be your dowry too.”

“How many cows am I worth?”

“All the cows in the world,” he said with utter sincerity. Thought about it and added jokingly, “Maybe a goat too.”

“Fine. A date it is. I do like doing social activities in each others’ company and eating food.” She snuggled a little closer. It was cold in the streetcar, so they could use that for an excuse. “I can teach you the tango next.”

He couldn’t help but smile at that, holding her closer. “I’d like that.” 

Back in 2018, they arrived back in time for dinner, though Connor declared it was going to be dinner out since they hadn’t started cooking anything. “Celebrate another successful mission, eh?”

Seated at a barbecue place, Lucy did the honors, doing the official search to see what the result of the mission had been. “Looks they turned out to be pretty formidable together: Jane got more aggressive and willing to speak up and engage, Lucy got a lot more moderate and moved away from anarchy, and engaged with more diverse causes.”

“So they met somewhere in the middle. Quite the team,” he told Lucy, catching her eye, seeing her blush and duck her head in acknowledgment.

“They advocated for women, for working people, for immigrants. Lucy came forward as a black woman when they began to work for black rights with Ida B. Wells-Barnett, when she moved to Chicago a few years later. Between those two, Kate Warne advocating for police reform among other things--she worked with Teddy Roosevelt before she died in 1904--and then Ida joining the causes, Chicago was--and is--considered the epicenter for the American humanitarian rights movement. The ACLU headquarters is actually there now, not in New York.”

“Rufus would be really happy to hear that,” Jiya said, and if there was the smallest edge of pain to her smile, most of it was genuine pleasure.

Back at the house, Lucy went to the kitchen to make some popcorn. She’d found “The Sound of Music”, so of course they had to sit down and watch it, and it wasn’t like he was sleepy yet anyway. Georg von Trapp had found his second chance unexpectedly, so he couldn’t help but wonder if he’d watch the movie with new eyes from the last time he’d seen it, ten years or more in the past. But as he went back towards the shed to grab the last of their everyday 1880s clothing so they could put it away, he saw Wyatt on the porch, hands braced on the railing, looking out into the Louisiana twilight, air heavy and ripe with the last fading echoes of summer.

He knew that look, that thousand-yard-stare. Passing Lucy at the microwave, ready to start the popcorn, he went to the fridge. “Might want to hold off. I’ll be a few minutes,” he told her, pulling out two beers.

She glanced at them, then up at his face, then towards the door. “Wyatt?” 

“Let me talk to him.” 

“All right.”

He stepped more noisily on the porch than he needed, but from his own experience, he knew it was better to not sneak up behind a trained killer. Holding out a beer, he raised an eyebrow, making the offer. 

Wyatt took it, turning it over in his hands. “Abita.”

“Local. You know how Connor likes his craft brews. And it’s better than Lone Star. Seriously, a whole liquor store and you picked that?”

“Sometimes you just need a cheap shitty beer, man.”

“Can’t argue that.” Wyatt sat down on the step, taking a sip of his beer, then looked up, back over his shoulder.

“Are you going to loom over me like some murderous giraffe, Garcia, or what?” 

Well, that sounded like an invitation. Sitting down on the step too, he figured he’d take the plunge, because he sensed Wyatt didn’t know where to start. “So she went back. As our spy.”

“I swear, if you’re going to question--look, _Jiya_ signed off on it.”

“I’m not.” He took a sip of the beer. “I grabbed the wrong bottles, clearly. Connor and his damn IPAs.” He didn’t see the point in drinking beers that seemed like the bitterness version of the pissing contest of eating insanely hot peppers for bragging rights.

Wyatt gave a low snort of laughter. “I know, right? The records, the IPA--man’s a total hipster.” He turned the bottle over in his hands, picking at the purple label. “I think...she had to go.”

“I wouldn’t doubt it.” He couldn’t quite look at Wyatt as he spoke. “If she’d come with us now, she’d never have a place here. We’d have no reason to trust her.” They would never let her into the safehouse. She’d be Wyatt’s guilty indulgence. “She’d never have a chance to redeem herself. She lied to us, hid among us, spied on our secrets. I can see why she thinks doing the same to them might balance the scales.” Just the same as how he'd known being their captive Rittenencyclopedia wouldn’t be nearly enough for his own atonement. “I needed to get out there and fight with you. Prove to you, and to myself, that I’d seen how wrong I was, and now I wanted to do it right.”

Wyatt nodded at that, gazing off into the distance. His voice, when he spoke up again, was low and rough. “I know all that. I get it. But...if Emma catches her, she’ll kill her. Kill Jess, and any chance our kid has at living dies with her besides. I can’t...” His voice caught. “Ah, fuck me. I can’t forgive her or trust her without her making some big damn gesture like that, OK, but I can’t lose her again either. And I don’t mean losing her and me, that’s...” He waved a hand, nearly a flailing gesture. “That’s...whatever, who knows what she and I are at this point. I mean I literally cannot go through Jessica dying again.”

“I can imagine.” He couldn’t think of Lucy dying. Couldn’t bear the thought, the fear of it that gripped him so tightly it paralyzed him. He’d broken so badly losing Lorena. He couldn’t survive it a second time. Not even the need to continue the fight would be enough for him. 

“And she wants to be good enough for our kid, and I do too, but it’s all just _so fucked up_ right now.” He wondered if Wyatt had found the liquor cabinet after dinner, because it wasn’t like him to just open up and babble like this. No, that was being dismissive. Maybe he’d finally found a limit beyond what he could bear, and for whatever reason, the man would let him in, even this much.

“Kids are more resilient than we give them credit for, anyhow. And being parents, you’ll never be perfect, but you both want to do the right thing. That’s a lot.”

“We’re having a little girl. Jess told me.” Wyatt flicked a nervous glance his way like a spooked horse, eyes not quite settling, then away again. “That’s, uh, not gonna be easy for you?”

It hurt still, but less than Emma’s vindictively triumphant news about Wyatt and Jessica's child, or her own. At least both Wyatt and Jessica wanted to do the right thing, to be the people their daughter deserved. And it wasn’t like he could resent everyone who had a child, especially a girl, or he’d never crawl out of the pit of his own bitterness. “You...that’s not something you need to worry about.” That was his problem. Though it surprised him Wyatt would recognize it, and actually seem to care, given how low Wyatt’s opinion of him had been in the past.

“She’ll get out of Rittenhouse before the baby comes. She made us promise that.”

“It’s brave of her. She’s facing what she did, and she’s fighting back the best way she can. Doing something that none of us except her can do. All you can do is support her in that, and believe she’s smart enough and strong enough to make it out.”

“She was stuck being scared for me all those years. Never knowing if I’d come back OK, or come back at all. Looks like it’s my turn to know what it’s like.” Oh, he knew that feeling now too in a way he hadn’t with Lorena since they’d left Darfur. He’d experienced the constant low-level fear for Lucy on missions, especially when they were split up and working with others from the team. But he had to trust her, believe in her, or else he’d smother her formidable capabilities with his terror.

“She’ll come back.” He said it for Wyatt’s sake, but somehow he wasn’t surprised to find he believed it himself. Jessica had finally chosen her own path, giving in to nobody’s demands except what she could learn to live with, what would let her make peace with herself. Having been there, he could respect that. “

The two of them sat there in silence after that, cautiously sipping at the terrible IPA but unable to really commit to drinking it, but it didn’t feel like an uncomfortable silence. Wyatt got to his feet first. “Thanks,” he said, giving an awkward half-smile. “You’re all right, I guess.”

 _Ringing endorsement,_ he wanted to wisecrack, but held back. Wyatt might be an idiot, but he’d respect that the man had forced himself to grow and change too in all of this. Maybe they’d be all right in the end. “You’re not half-bad yourself.” Though he still couldn’t resist a smirk, and a joking, “Still not my type, though.”

Wyatt gave an extravagant roll of his eyes, and headed inside, flipping him the bird over his shoulder as he went. He had to think that this was what it was like having an annoying insecure little brother--Rufus, what had developed between them in those final missions, had been more the earnest little brother in way over his head. What had Gabriel thought of his own little brother, all those years growing up? Gabe kept calling, wanting to meet, surprising him with the news that their mother was still alive and wanted to see him too. They reached out to him, eager to see him, eager to embrace him. He’d dodged that for weeks now, so wrapped up in his shame that he wasn’t the good man they’d known, convinced here was no way they’d be able to keep him once they knew. He’d been standing still too long because of it. Probably needed to put more faith in them. Maria Parker Thompkins Flynn was no shrinking violet, and he had to imagine her older son wasn’t either. He needed to keep moving forward, reject the man he’d been while acknowledging what progress he’d made in who he’d become, and what he still moved towards.

Stopping in the kitchen to surreptitiously dispose of the damn IPAs down the sink, he went to the fridge again, grabbing two bottles of something actually drinkable. Lucy, popcorn, and “The Sound of Music” were waiting, and that sounded like the perfect evening.


	21. 3x06: A Rumor In St. Petersburg (Wyatt/Jiya, Alūksne, Latvia, August 1781)

He had to admit, the 18th century made him sort of miss the late 19th and early 20th century. People smelled better, less risk of epidemic, and there were stores with ready-made clothes to steal, but it was before security got tight. Not to mention if they got caught shoplifting in 1908, chances were they’d end up in jail rather than killed--and he’d proven right from the _Hindenburg_ mission that he could lockpick the shitty locks they had then. 

Unfortunately they didn’t have much 18th century wardrobe on hand. Given they’d only had the Zenger mission in that century since Mason Industries and its fantastic wardrobe department went up in flames, that wasn’t much. Lucy had made an awkward _I don’t want to say ‘no’ but the thought of it’s obviously hurting my soul_ face when Denise tentatively suggested maybe their 1730s clothes could work for the 1780s, and launched into a reluctant explanation that they’d maybe stick out too much, even if they claimed to be provincials from another country. 

As was, that meant once again they had to do their “shopping” from local washlines and the like. They’d hit the jackpot when Jiya scented hot air with an ammoniac whiff. Lye soap, Lucy informed them, and they’d sneaked close to see washlines chock full in the summer sunshine behind a small red brick house. Apparently a commercial laundry--small business ownership alive and well, clearly. They’d waited for the laundress to head inside and gone to town on the clothes. Somehow he’d never imagined _stealing breeches in Latvia_ as being among his career highlights. He also couldn’t quite shake the realization that if they got caught doing that, they could end up at the business end of a musket or sword or something, and probably nobody would object if they got killed. They’d grabbed enough to fake it for the few hours the mission would hopefully take, and hightailed it 

“So we stole some stuff and we’re hiding in the ruins of a castle. I kind of expect someone to chase and arrest me in the name of the Jarl,” Jiya said, catching her breath, leaning one hand on the tumbledown stones of the broken castle walls. She looked around at them. “Um...Skyrim? Nobody? _Seriously_? Can’t wait to get Rufus back so I’m not looking at the stares of total incomprehension anytime I mention a video game.” She said it glibly, but he saw the flicker of pain in her expression all the same.

“And sadly, you’re missing playing Assassin’s Creed Odyssey for this,” Garcia replied, and he was about ready to bark at the man to be more sensitive when he saw the careful way he watched Jiya, the way she gave him a wry half-smile, and realized he’d been joking to cheer her up. 

“I’m claiming the TV when we get back. Just try to stop me.”

After pulling on the shirt, breeches, boots, vest, and jacket, he climbed some of the rubble to survey the heights, taking in the lake and the town with its tall-steepled church, not certain yet of what they were doing. These missions--worst and most incomplete briefings ever, to be honest. But Special Forces were expected to be able to roll with the punches. 99 percent of success was handling the unexpected, and admittedly, he’d always been a bit more of a cowboy about that than some. Others, like Bam-Bam, were obsessive planners and totally by the book. “OK, cool, so...we’re a few hours up on Emma.” The chrono-nav still wouldn’t behave enough to get more specific than something like a 12-hour window, and that was the best they could do. Connor’s explanation of why had used a hell of a lot of scientific Scrabble words, but Wyatt followed well enough to mentally condens it down to _It’s impossible right now with the science we have._ “Any thoughts on what the hell we’re doing here?”

“Let’s pull it all together,” Lucy said, sitting down on a cracked granite block, settling her dark green skirt around her legs. “Wyatt--and Jiya--you got the texts from Jessica.”

He had. Fully an hour before the Mothership jumped, Jessica had messaged. _Mothership going out today. Sending George Reznikov. 25, dark hair, brown eyes, 5 foot 10. Ex-Army. Russian studies major. Studied French and Russian, court protocol, 18th century dancing. He’s prepped for the long haul, maybe infiltrate the Russian court? Darla piloting, Emma and me staying back. All I have. Sorry._ He could almost feel from the message that she’d wanted to hand them the mission on a silver platter by laying out the entire mission plan, make it clear she was on their side. He wanted to believe in her too, but she’d fooled him so utterly once, and he couldn’t hand her his heart and his trust again just like that. “Yeah. So--maybe he’s supposed to be a mole in the Russian court.”

“In my time-trance I saw what looked like the Peterhof palace in St. Petersburg,” Jiya confirmed. “There was this sort of big imperial court thing you see in historical dramas, with a woman definitely in charge, sitting on the throne. A woman and a teenage boy were there curtseying to her.” She jerked her chin back towards the south. “But it--rippled, I guess? Went somewhere else. There was also a forest that looks like the one nearby, and a coach on the road. Someone’s traveling to Russia?”

Lucy nodded at that, crossing her arms over her chest. “All right. Here’s what I’ve got. It’s context, sorry, not really an answer. Right now Catherine the Great is ruling Russia. Has since she ousted her husband Peter III in a coup in 1762. And we’re west of St. Petersburg, so if someone’s traveling there for Jiya to see them on the road, and for Rittenhouse to come to Latvia rather go to St. Petersburg to plant George Reznikov right in the court, they’ve got business here first.” She shook her head in frustration. “I don’t know my European history as well. What Rittenhouse wants specifically here, and who might be traveling--” She glanced over at Garcia. 

“General Euro history isn’t my thing either,” he said dryly. “Give me a rebellion and I’m all over it.”

“No, but you’re better than me on general Eastern Europe,” Lucy replied.

“Sure, but this isn’t Pugachev’s Rebellion here. But...let me think.” He sat down on a stone near Lucy, stretching out his legs. “The Baltic states have been contested for centuries. Russia, Poland, Prussia, Germany later, even Sweden and Denmark got into it over them. Honestly, I’ve got nothing on this. If anything important happened in Latvia today, news to me.” He shrugged in an expansive flourish. “My suggestion is that we track the road, start looking for that carriage carrying whoever’s important, find our Rittenmole, kill him, and hopefully we’ll be back home in time for a hot shower, getting these clothes fumigated, and order some pizza.” He glanced over at Jiya. “Though...were we at Catherine’s court? That’s--what, at least a week from here?”

“We weren’t in the vision. Doesn’t mean we weren’t there,” Jiya warned them.

“Let’s go,” Lucy said. “I’ll keep trying to think of what the connection might be.”

Heading south from the moss-draped ruins down the hill towards the post road, where couriers traveled to deliver mail from town to town, they soon were swallowed up by the forest. Looking around at the towering trees blocking out the sun so that even in the late afternoon the forest floor was cool and shadowed, the entire area in a sort of dim half-twilight, Wyatt decided once again he had a love/hate relationship with forests. Maybe it was growing up in the wide open Texas plains, but the claustrophobia and the sense that someone was out there watching were acutely real. All those trees? They provided a hell of a lot of cover, which was great for you, but also seriously great for your enemy. 

He caught a glimpse of Garcia on the other side of the road, slipping between the trees, doing his own recon. Somehow one giant Croatian could make himself damn near invisible, up until the point he decided to start shooting or blowing things up. In that, nothing much had changed from the days they were chasing him throughout history.

The sharp booming crack ripped through the air nearby, setting a raven nearby into startled squawking flight, and it immediately pinged his alertness. _Could be a hunter getting venison for the night?_ Turning around, towards the noise, he listened, watched, searching intently. Nothing amiss within sight. But the second shot that came within mere seconds of the first could mean one of only two things. Either the hunter had a friend or second musket and was a crappy shot the first time and finishing the job, or that right there was a firearm with loading and rate of fire capabilities far beyond laboriously jamming a single ball down the barrel of an 18th century flintlock. Harder to tell unless someone was right on top of the sound, but modern firearms also had a higher pitch to the shot. He thought he heard that, but it might be his ears playing tricks on him.

Looking over at Garcia, he saw the other man gesture to the west where the sound had come from, expression suddenly hard and intent, and then flicked a hand over to both sides of the dirt track, indicating _We should split up, get off the road_. He nodded in reply. The two of them immediately headed to opposite sides of the road, stepping into the cover of the treeline, and he caught a glimpse of the other man’s green jacket here and there between the trees, and knew Garcia would be tracking him also so they could keep pace. They set into a steady approach pattern, covering ground as quickly as possible without racing right into an unknown situation. Jiya fell in behind him, and he assumed Lucy followed Garcia--of course--and the two of them would have their own pistols drawn. Maybe they hadn’t been in the field as soldiers quite like he and Garcia had, but the Rittenhouse mission had been a hell of a hard school for the two of them, over the past six months in particular. He’d have confidently put either of them as far better trained than an Army soldier graduating Basic. The third shot came, and he picked the speed up a notch.

Then he saw the carriage stopped in the middle of the road. Dusty and a bit beat up, obviously used hard, but the crappy potholed and deeply rutted excuse for roads didn’t help. He could only imagine how much more of a nightmare they’d be in winter.

He quickly saw where those three shots went. Both horses were down, lying in the road, still tangled in their traces, blood mingling with the sun-baked dust and flakes of dried mud, and a dead man slumped over in the driver’s seat on the front of the carriage. A man approached the carriage, dark haired, with what looked like an M-1 slung over his shoulder, and a pistol that was clearly no flintlock in his hand. Ex-Army, Jessica said. He’d know how to use a rifle, and if he was military, planned for this for months, he would have realized that the historical equivalent of shooting out the tires and then taking out the driver would be to take out the horses and driver. Sound tactical maneuver, leaving anyone else in the vehicle as a sitting duck. Plus he’d likely be a good enough shot to kill one horse, then nail the other within a few seconds while it presumably panicked at the lurch and jolt of the carriage as its partner fell dead, and then get the driver, probably still firing from cover. 

Reznikov was on his side of the road, so he gestured _Cover me_ , trusting Garcia to do it, and kicked it into high gear. Though there was that dark, lurching sense of dread in the pit of his stomach already because he’d been in enough gunfights already to tell it was far, far too late. He couldn’t close the distance quickly enough, couldn’t reliably fire while running, and of course he only had a pistol, _why_ did he only have a pistol right now, they really needed to get rifles in the Lifeboat for shit like this. _Complain to management, fine._

He’d been correct. Far too late. Reznikov flung the carriage door open and got off three more shots long, then ran like hell long before anyone’s pistol was within range, and it would be useless to pursue him on foot with how quickly he vanished into the trees. He’d been trained well enough throughout the years to recognize it and not even waste the bullets, much as some part of him wanted to fire anyway in some kind of impotent rage and the stupid hope that somehow, some way, he’d score a hit.

They could fan out and search for him, but chances were they’d be walking right into an ambush there. Stuffing down the adrenaline and anger at literally watching mission failure in front of his eyes, he tried his best to focus. Assess the situation, make a plan. One step at a time.

Gesturing _Cover me_ again, just in case Reznikov decided to hide nearby and take some potshots, he approached the open carriage door. If the upholstery hadn’t been a dark wine-colored velvet, it would have shown the blood spatters far more. As was, the pale paint on the walls showed it starkly enough. It looked like a Halloween horror show. Three shots at near point-blank range had done the man on the floor of the carriage no favors. Two in the back, and one in the head. Wyatt sighed. Yeah, another failure. As good as they were, they were still playing catch up on mission after mission, and it cost lives. All they could do now was figure out what Reznikov’s game had been, figure out what he might do next, and see if any damage control could be done.

“Let’s see if he has--” Hopefully he had some kind of identifying stuff, either on him, or in the luggage strapped to the back of the carriage. If he was important enough for Rittenhouse to assassinate, he was important enough to probably carry something.

Garcia grabbed his shoulder. “Shut up for a second. I heard something.”

He turned, scanning the trees. “Reznikov’s out there?”

“Clearly he is,” and Garcia’s tone clearly said _idiot_ in glaring neon, “but it was something in the carriage. Someone else is in there.” He called something in what must have been Russian.

The reply, shockingly enough, came in English. A low groan of “Please...help me.”

“Keep an eye out for us,” he told Lucy and Jiya. Just in case someone else did actually come along for the party. Maybe that Darla that Jessica mentioned had showed up as backup. After all, Rittenhouse had sent three sleepers after JFK. 

Grabbing the man’s shoulders while Garcia got him by the knees, they hauled him up and out of the carriage, carefully putting him down by the roadside. The devastating bullet wounds didn’t bother Wyatt by this point. He’d seen too many dead men. “Do you recognize him?” he asked Lucy, as Garcia turned back to the carriage, helping someone climb out.

“Not readily,” she said lowly, and he turned his attention back to the survivor. A teenage boy, dark-haired, brown eyed, and smeared all over with blood and brains, but looking physically unharmed.

“Are you injured at all?” he asked.

Something in the boy seemed to find its center again, and he straightened his shoulders, meeting Wyatt’s eyes with a clear, level stare full of sharp intelligence. “I wasn’t injured at all.” He looked down at the body on the road, breathing heavily in a way that Wyatt recognized as a suppressed sob. “Mr. Dana covered my body with his when the carriage stopped. He hid me away from the...the assassin.”

“Dana,” Lucy said, rolling the name off her tongue. “ _Merde._ ”

“Madam!” the kid said, taking a half-step back and giving her a shocked look. It would have been laughable if he hadn’t been through a massacre and looked like a bad Halloween costume for Ye Olde Colonial Villager of Horrors. 

“This is Francis Dana?” Lucy asked him, gesturing towards the body, her voice going suddenly soft and gentle. “Secretary of the American embassy to Paris?”

“How do you know Mr. Dana?” Suspicion entered the kid’s tone, and his eyes narrowed. He seemed too smart for a kid whose voice hadn’t cracked yet. “For that matter, from your accent, what on Earth are Americans doing on the Russian frontier?”

“Your mission wasn’t the only one to the court of the Russian empress.” Lucy gave him an enigmatic smile. 

“Even if it was the only one officially authorized by Congress,” Garcia chimed in.

“Those are very strange weapons.” That suspicious tone and stare continued. “I can’t figure out where the flint is. Also, your accent’s peculiar.” 

Wyatt guiltily tucked his pistol away. “Prussian?” he offered. It had worked before.

“I saw nothing of their like when we passed through Prussia. And I trust Emperor Frederick would be eager to have his soldiers take advantage of marvelous new weapons before they’d fall into the hands of American--you’re irregulars at best, spies at worst.”

Great. They were getting interrogated by a pint-size Sherlock Holmes. “Yes, we’re spies,” Garcia said dryly. “I’m assuming Paris heard about Benedict Arnold’s little treason stunt last year? We’re the spies who tracked down Arnold. Tried to get to him before he could give too much to the British, but he slipped away in the end thanks to another British spy. We did take out General Charles Cornwallis while we were at it, though.” Maybe in this timeline Garcia had been on their side fully during that mission, but the results had been somewhat similar, according to Denise’s mission reports. “We’re not Nathan Hale, to get so easily caught and hanged.”

“I believe you’re John Quincy Adams, then?” Lucy asked him. “The secretary to Mr. Dana?”

The boy hesitated, and then nodded, brushing a lock of brown hair that had escaped his queue back from his eyes with the back of his hand, not noticing how it left a smear of blood on one childishly soft and round cheek. “I am.”

He wasn’t a history nerd like Lucy, but he’d memorized all the presidents in third grade in the interest of winning a pencil box with robots on it, courtesy of Mrs. Tidenwell. John Quincy Adams was the sixth president, John Adams’ son, and that was about all he knew. Not a president among the big names, so would he have been on Rittenhouse’s hit list for some reason? And what was with the rescuing teenaged presidents? “Seriously, who’s next?” he muttered. “Teen Teddy Roosevelt?” He heard Lucy’s suppressed snort of laughter.

“We were told about your mission to the Empress’ court,” Jiya spoke up. “Though we didn’t expect--”

“Who was that?” Adams asked, gesturing towards where Reznikov had disappeared. There was that flicker of uncertainty in him, something that made him see the softness in his features, hear the light, high voice. He was a child, thirteen or fourteen, if Wyatt had to guess. He hadn’t seen anything like this before. If he was lucky he never would again. He could hardly remember himself being that young, having not seen a person dead by violence. _You never forget your first._ He’d been 19 and his squad came across a dead man in the desert outside Kandahar, maybe ten feet from the roadside. His killers wanted him found. Either a warning to American forces, or an Al-Qaeda operative given as an offering, an appeasement. Sloppily shot in the face, obviously kneeling when he’d been killed. Never knew his name, his story, or exactly why he’d died, but the sight of him would linger always in Wyatt’s mind, as would the soles of his shoes, almost worn through.

“We’re not sure,” Wyatt told him. “Local bandit? Possibility of British spies to track you all the way here to lay an ambush. They would have struck a lot closer to Paris.” Because Lucy had mentioned they’d been there as part of the American delegation.

Adams eyed him, shaking his head incredulously. “He’s a local bandit with a highly advanced Prussian pistol? This situation doesn’t make any sense.” His voice rose, tight and angry, seeming on the verge of hysterical yelling.

“John,” Garcia said, voice rough-edged but oddly soft, “we’ll figure this out, but let’s get you off the road and out of the open, and then let you clean up.” At that, Adams looked down at his blood-soaked clothes, then back down at Dana’s body. Something in his expression trembled and broke, and suddenly his fearful anger evaporated, and he was absolutely a child, barely five feet tall, overwhelmed and alone in a foreign country and scared. He nodded, looking down at the blood drying on his hands, turning away from the body. “Show us which trunks, we’ll get you some clean clothes, and I saw there’s a stream nearby.”

Adams stood back as they got the trunks down, fishing out a clean set of clothes. Then he and Garcia escorted him towards the stream a few hundred feet distant. Better that the two men on the team guard him. He’d probably be awkward and shy with the women there, watching him undress. Lucy and Jiya drew their guns again, sinking back behind the treeline and keeping watch over the carriage.

Sitting on a log, keeping watch with his pistol at the ready, he glanced over at Garcia. Keeping his voice pitched low to not be overheard, and the babbling trickle of the stream helped too, he asked, “So what are we going to do here?”

“Good question. I don’t know who Dana was or exactly why he matters. Lucy’s going to have to figure that one out. And that’ll help us figure out what to do to patch over the damage if we can.”

He looked at Adams, vigorously splashing water on his face and hands, blood-stained shirt soaked through. “So are we getting a sideline here in rescuing future presidents as kids?”

“I’d rather be the historical kid version of Secret Service than be the man who’d shoot Lincoln or consider shooting Rittenhouse Junior.” Garcia said it matter-of-factly.

“Got to admit I’m surprised you’d bring it up.” 

Something dark passed over Garcia’s features, a grimace that if Wyatt had to put a name to it, he’d have called if self-loathing. “Why not? President, and a kid named John in the 1780’s? You have to be thinking it.”

“I actually wasn’t.” Crap. Were they having a moment here? He couldn’t help the flicker of irritation at Garcia wanting to spill his guts about this and forcing him to respond, but he had to ruefully admit that all right, shit, he’d done it to Lucy often enough. Done it to Garcia too, for that matter. Fair was fair. “Yeah, you did those things. I guess...I respect that you don’t try to make excuses for it.” He didn’t try to deny it or weasel his way out of it. He hadn’t exactly taken the “get out of jail free” card of being in a new timeline with no record of what he’d done. Reluctant as he’d been to admit it, especially when being dragged mercilessly for his own failings, he could acknowledge Garcia Flynn still held himself accountable. “But I’d say you’ve made up for it.” 

After the obvious surprise, now he could see the amusement creeping into Garcia’s eyes, the twitch of a half-smile. “Are we having a moment right now?”

“Ah, shut up.”

It sprang into full-blown glee. “We _are._ We’re having a moment. Only took, what, ten months?”

“Focus on the mission already!” But even as he rolled his eyes, he tried to not smile. So the man would accept the compliment and then not make it a thing. Good.

Garcia sobered quickly though, snapping back into focus, and the ability to throw the switch so rapidly told Wyatt, as ever, that he was a professional at this too. He looked at Adams, currently cleaned up and changing into clothing without bloodstains. His breeches were a little too long, probably sent by parents who expected him to be away for years and experience a growth spurt. Wyatt watched him neatly tying a black stock around his neck, tucking the ends inside his waistcoat. Lucy explained that a child wouldn’t wear that, much like a modern necktie. Wyatt remembered his first tie from his cousin Sandy’s wedding when he was twelve years old and, Grandpa Sherwin showing him how to tie it despite his fingers being all twisted, bent, and knobbly like the branches of an aged oak thanks to years of arthritis. Wyatt’s heart twisted, seeing Adams trying so painfully hard to look like a grownup rather than a child. “I don’t know what exactly we’re going to do here, but hope Lucy’s got the answer to this.”

He couldn’t help but sigh. “Yeah, that makes two of us.”

~~~~~~~~~~

Retreating from the carriage, they headed into the woods a bit, following the men and Adams enough so that when they came back they’d be easily found. Sitting down on an old stump, Lucy perched on a log beside her, Jiya could see both of them kept vigilant eyes and ears. They could have been two village women out for a stroll on a clear, sunny August day, except for the pistols still gripped tightly in their hands. Well, that and Jiya’s skin. She’d probably have to claim to be Roma or something, and that’d go over great. “You think Reznikov’s still around?”

Lucy sat there, toying with her hands, an anxious habit of hers that Jiya realized she’d seen much less of in these last few months. It said something about this mission that it was back. “No, I think he hightailed it back to the Mothership to get to the next phase of the plan.”

“We’ll fix it,” she said, trying to calm whatever frazzled Lucy’s nerves right now. “We’ve dealt with it before. Rittenhouse takes someone out, but hopefully we can patch over history enough.”

“I know,” she said. “It’s just...every time we go pre-Civil War, I get antsy. The further back we go, the higher the risk. When that fork in the road comes earlier, and when America’s less concrete to begin, the change could be more dramatic.”

Trying for some humor to cheer her up, she said, “Look, I get it. I don’t even want to think how many semesters of math I took, but that sounds like pretty basic conceptual triangulation there. Longer hypotenuse of time elapsed from the changed event, or c, means b, in this case our distance from the history we know, is gonna be bigger.” 

Lucy’s lips twitched up briefly. “I’ll be honest. I hated math. Dyscalculia doesn’t help. I have to see the numbers to get them straight in my head. Give me a phone number and I’d switch some of the digits around, unless I wrote it down. It helps on the Lifeboat sim that the coordinates are right there on the screen for me to see, but I still want to triple check. Numbers and me, it’s like trying to pin Jello on the wall.”

”What flavor?” She tried to make light of it, and not make Lucy feel bad about admitting it. Somehow she had the feeling that lousy as Carol Preston seemed to have been about many things, she probably had been particularly merciless about Lucy’s struggling with numbers.

“Lime. I’m convinced there is no worse Jello flavor than lime. Funny thing is that I absolutely can keep dates and years straight with history, but that’s because there’s events and people I can link to the numbers. I’m never going to confuse 1793 with 1973.”

“1973 Marie Antoinette, though. No, actually, 1983. Think about it. Neon, outrageous hair and fashion, roller skates, cocaine, the Cold War, and general 1980’s total excess.”

Lucy looked at her, giving her a grin. “Actually, you may be onto something there.” Then the smile vanished. “We’ll work on that. But we should focus for now. Garcia and Wyatt might be back any minute, and we’d better be ready to move.”

“What’s the thought?”

“All right. Francis Dana. Member of the Sons of Liberty, and like I said, John Adams’ secretary, appointed as an emissary to Catherine the Great’s court. Most people don’t know that Catherine actually helped the war effort. Not directly, but by refusing to support the British when they asked her to send troops to America, and also by trying to bring around the concept of ‘armed neutrality’. That neutral nations had the freedom to trade with nations at war without obstacles, except if they were trading weapons or munitions. They refused to accept blockades of whole countries, only certain ports, and only if warships were nearby. The British, understandably, were a bit pissed off since even now, their naval supremacy is a very important playing card. And while she didn’t formally recognize the US, between refusing to help Britain, and pulling some of their teeth with the naval treaty, she helped legitimize the American Revolution with other nations too.

“So where does Dana fit into this?”

Lucy’s brow furrowed. “I’m not sure. Funny thing is he went to St. Petersburg and basically sat around, because Catherine couldn’t receive him as an ambassador of a nation that she couldn’t formally recognize yet, and Dana couldn’t push the matter because the Continental Congress sent him some contradictory orders. By all accounts, it’s a failed embassy.”

“Maybe Reznikov’s looking to make it a _not_ failed embassy. Replace Dana, do everything he can to drag Russia into the war on the American side.”

She watched Lucy’s eyes go wide. “Oh, _hell_. And he’s in his early twenties, right?”

“So Jessica said.” She’d been pleasantly surprised that Jessica obeyed orders and messaged both her and Wyatt, and so far, the information checked out. Didn’t mean she was ready to hand over the keys to the car, so to speak, but maybe Jessica really was telling the truth.

“There were some nasty rumors about Catherine. Lots of slut-shaming, and that whole business about the horse is a total lie. She was a serial monogamist, had maybe a dozen lovers in her lifetime. But, she was, uh, a bit of a cougar. Her taste in lovers was usually men in their twenties, no matter how old she got. Had a bit of a Pygmalion thing going on with trying to get them into art, philosophy, broaden their minds and all.” 

“So she was girlfriend and mom both.”

“More or less.”

Now Jiya followed where she was going. “Crap. The nice American ambassador boy walks in, exotic and intriguing, and tries to position himself to be the new favorite boytoy--”

“That’s actually what they were called. Polite euphemism. ‘The Favorite.’ And maybe even as she’s trying to influence him by introducing him to higher culture, he’s trying to influence her to join the war effort. It’s a risky gambit, because when she’s staying carefully neutral, gallivanting around with an American might not look great, but...who hasn’t ignored reason when it comes to love?”

Jiya had to wonder if she was tacitly throwing shade at her one-night fling with Wyatt there, but it was better to let that go. “We’ve all been there. OK, so what do we do?”

“It’s not like we can march into Peterhof and denounce him as an assassin and a fake. We can’t stick around long enough ourselves to see the embassy done. We need another would-be ambassador, and one who makes sense. Not to mention if we do it right, it’s going to be more of a passive not-quite-embassy, so we can’t exactly take someone holding up their end of history elsewhere. I mean, Alexander Hamilton was considered for the job, but obviously he’s got big things to do over the next few years stateside. Plus most anyone we could get, we’re just causing a war of imposters who Congress never assigned to the job. ”

“So we find someone to impersonate Dana and hope John Quincy Adams agrees to shut up about it for the sake of history?”

“We could.” Lucy chewed her lower lip briefly, shaking her head. “But that seems too risky. Besides, we’re in _Latvia_. Who the heck are we going to get here to be for the American cause, Jiya? I’m just--Adams himself is too young to take the job on, or we could just have him be honest and say Dana was killed on the road.”

Too many variables, and so it was, like Lucy had described, like trying to pin Jello to the wall. “What happens with Dana dead? Any major effects?”

“The Federalists lose one of their players and chief advisers for the future, though they do a good job imploding by the election of 1800 anyway. The Supreme Court of Massachusetts loses a Chief Justice. John Quincy Adams loses the man he considered a second father. His grandson, Richard Henry Dana Jr., is never born, never goes to sea as a merchant sailor, never writes ‘Two Years Before the Mast’ and becomes an advocate for human rights, including being an abolitionist. So there are some losses. But admittedly, it’s smaller pieces carved out of history. The kind that we find usually seems to fix itself somehow.”

Jiya had come to think of history as being like some kind of weird non-Newtonian fluid. High surface tension, resisting force initially. Under the stress of Rittenhouse punching a sudden gap in the container of space-time, they’d found that history flowed in its own fashion to fill it, sometimes sluggishly, sometimes imperfectly, but it usually got the job done in some way close to the original. Once the Lifeboat crew patched things over as best they could, history typically sealed up the rest of the gaps. The changes left behind tended to be smaller, more personal. Like Lucy’s sister disappearing. “So he matters mostly to his family.” But to them, his loss would mean everything.

She eased her grip on the pistol, realizing only now how tightly she’d been clutching it, the pressure of the metal leaving indentations in her fingers. Things had changed there too. A few months ago, there was no way Garcia and Wyatt would have left the two of them alone out in the woods with a Rittenhouse agent running around. Obviously their fighters had mentally signed off on her and Lucy as capable enough to take care of themselves. That felt good, given how helpless she’d felt when Jessica kidnapped her, when she’d landed in Chinatown. It gave her more hope that when they came back for Rufus, they could succeed. When they came back after Rufus’ death, they’d been exhausted, wounded physically and psychologically, team dynamic shattered, Lifeboat barely running, everything at its bleakest, lowest ebb.

They were a stronger team and stronger people than they’d been five months ago. They’d rebuilt the Lifeboat, rebuilt the team, recovered from some of the deep wounds inflicted by Jessica and Emma. There was no way they could have gone right then. They would have failed, and that would have shut the door on Rufus, perhaps forever. She had the sinking feeling that the Lifeline wasn’t exactly going to be Wonka’s Golden Ticket. They couldn’t screw around with the same point in history multiple times, seeking the perfect do-over. Folding the fabric of space-time in on itself multiple times, those pleats inevitably would cause a tear elsewhere to relieve the strain. Not to mention the likely echo effect of those folds touching each other. Would it cause time-ghosts, something like her visions? Who knew, but she didn’t want to find out.

Didn’t mean she hadn’t been tempted to climb into that shiny upgraded Lifeboat, and boot Ripley-Lucy and Bear Grylls-Wyatt out of it, patience and courtesy and time travel rules and their cryptic pronouncements be damned. But as usual, the people from the future knew more and knew how it had to go.

Then Lucy was up like a shot and Jiya had to hold back the kick of adrenaline, wanting to look around frantically, ready to fight or flee. Seeing Lucy pacing a few steps, kicking aside some of the pine needles carpeting the forest floor, she let out her breath, trying to slow her heart rate, pulse suddenly pounding in her ears. Lucy snapped her fingers, turning back abruptly to look at her. “His family--Jiya, that’s it.”

“He doesn’t look old enough to have a grown son?” But even as she said it, she kicked herself for having made the assumption. Apparently she’d been living in the 1880’s a bit too long. “His wife?”

“His wife Elizabeth. Not much written about her--”

“Woman in history without much information. There’s a surprise.”

“She didn’t actually come with him to France, or Russia. She’s presumably back home in Massachusetts. But we could...if we jumped there back in, say, March, and convinced her to come, the travel math would work out. She could say she got a letter from him saying he was headed for St. Petersburg and wanted her, and any of their children, to come with him. It’s going to end up more of a ceremonial post so the Continental Congress won’t care much that a woman ends up their presence at Catherine’s court, and the history won’t look weird to anyone else. He got killed by bandits on the road, she carried out his mission. Less obvious than having to send someone else.”

“And then we go to St. Petersburg to try to stop Reznikov.”

“He’ll have a head start on us. He’ll probably have tried to infiltrate the court already. Claim he’s the ambassador. Garcia will probably be able to better figure that angle out than me. He’s good at the field operational stuff.”

“You two are…”

“We’re what?” Lucy asked, something sharp and defensive entering her tone. It put Jiya in mind of a hedgehog, curling up and bristling. From her wary expression, she expected to be judged.

“I’m not Wyatt, OK? You’re a good team. We’ve all seen that these last months. How you two work together.” Lucy’s history know-how, and Garcia’s spy smarts--how often had the two of them worked out the answer to the Rittenhouse problem on that mission? It took looking back now to see how much they’d all come to rely on that dynamic at the core of the team. Also strange to acknowledge that maybe some of that was that the two of them could be strong like that because they had each other now, whereas she was missing Rufus, and Wyatt--well, the whole Jessica thing was still a dumpster fire. She couldn’t settle for less than full honesty either, seeing Lucy’s shield up, and knowing exactly how much she’d probably dealt with Wyatt’s onslaught of criticism in the past to inspire it. “Besides, you think I’d begrudge you having someone you love, because right now I don’t have that? You don’t need to feel guilty about being happy, Lucy. Or him, I guess. Given you two have probably lost the most in this war.”

Lucy looked down and away, folding her arms over her chest. “Thanks. That...that means a lot.” Jiya noticed she didn’t deny being in love with him. Did either of them even know how they lit up around each other? Subtler than most new couples, but obvious to anyone who knew them well. Even more so lately, and he’d taken off his wedding ring after the Addams/Parsons mission. Obviously things were becoming serious. Though she disagreed with Wyatt on one joking assumption he’d remarked on during yesterday’s shooting practice: _So, are they sneaking out to the shed when nobody’s looking, or what? You never even hear bedsprings._ They weren’t sleeping together yet, in either sense. Wyatt had overlooked the obvious. They’d chosen once again to take separate rooms after the move from Gettysburg to LaPlace, and they hadn’t given up on that yet. Some things were still on a Victorian pace in Camp Preston-Flynn. Though she really didn’t care what they were or weren’t doing, unless it became a source of tension between them. 

“You weren’t a jerk about Rufus and me when you were hurting. You deserve the same.” She’d tried as hard as she could to be kind to Lucy, but she’d been dealing with so much herself right then, frightened by the out of control visions, feeling shut out by Rufus’ rejection of that part of her. She’d had so little to spare for her friend, and she didn’t know that she’d have had the right key to reach out to her. Not then, anyway. “And I know how much you must have been hurting. I...didn’t understand it fully then to reach out to you. But maybe I get it now. I was only in Rittenhouse’s hands for like twelve hours. But I was in a different kind of prison thanks to them. They cost me three years of my life, running and hiding. Away from everything I knew, everyone I loved. Thinking I’d never see them again.” If anyone understood that, it would probably be Garcia, who’d lived as a fugitive for years himself, torn away from everyone he’d loved, desperate and with nobody to turn to thanks to Rittenhouse.

Lucy looked at her, eyes wide and dark, full of sympathy. “Jiya...I didn’t think of it that way, but…”

“Like I said. I didn’t understand what you’d been through then, when you needed it. Maybe I still don’t, because while they were going to try to turn me, it wasn’t my own mother who did it to me.” Being betrayed by Jessica, that was painful enough. 

“I’m sorry.” Lucy reached out, put a hand on Jiya’s arm. Jiya couldn’t help but reach out, and do the same. _I see you. I see what you went through._ “But at least I didn’t leave behind a whole different life. I’m never going to say we shouldn’t have brought you back, and given you the chance. But you’d made a new life there. You must have had friends, a home, people you cared about, who cared about you. Rufus wasn’t all you lost that day, was he?” 

Something went tight in Jiya’s throat at that, because Lucy was the first to see it, to say it. “No.” She had to wonder sometimes if they missed her, if they worried about where she’d gone. They probably assumed she’d been murdered in an alley somewhere, or kidnapped to go work as a prostitute in the logging camps or something like that. She’d vanished, without a goodbye, and they’d never know for sure what had become of her. The not knowing had to be worse than the finality of death. She could say that because the anxious fear of not knowing what would become of Rufus was the same thing, the agonizing hope without any guarantee of success. Terrible as death was, it was at least closure, and as she’d told Garcia, the Victorians had a lot less fear of death than people in the modern era besides.

She’d survived being torn up by the roots once, flung into 1885, and she’d gone back to 2018 where she _belonged_ so that was fine, wasn’t it? But sometimes the ache still hung there in the pit of her stomach, the sense of being severed from something again so abruptly and decisively, and flung into a strange situation once again. She’d belonged there too, in the end. She’d started to feel like those roots were growing again in 2018, but sometimes she woke in the night, wondering if and when it could happen again to her. She’d been yanked around twice, traumatic situations both times, and besides, they were playing with space-time. Could anything ever feel like reality, like forever, when all it took was one determined person with a time machine to prove that nothing was truly permanent? 

Some things were, though. She’d never stopped loving Rufus. She’d loved him in this timeline, in her own timeline, in the timeline those future versions of Lucy and Wyatt came from, and she had to believe the two of them had been together in other timelines too. If she got him back, he’d be slightly different, and she’d be afraid that it would never be the same, and she’d be afraid that she could lose him again. But that didn’t make it something that wasn’t still worth having. “I’m sorry too. But...we’ve all suffered and lost people we loved. If you can find some happiness as a safe haven from all this, nobody should resent that. And Garcia can be an overly dramatic pain in the ass sometimes, but he’s a good man.” Not to mention she was pretty certain he’d made up his mind, wouldn’t waffle like Wyatt had. For good or bad, Garcia Flynn was absolutely decisive.

“He could stand to hear that from someone besides me,” she said, voice quiet and suddenly strained.

“Hear what?” Like they’d summoned the giant pain in the ass himself, he’d sneaked up on them, cat-footed, just in time to overhear the last words.

“We were talking about the mission and me always being the one to break the bad news,” Lucy said, turning to him without missing a beat. “Where’s Wyatt and John Quincy Adams?”

“About thirty seconds back. I went and scouted ahead.” Garcia glanced around the clearing. “So I assume you’ve got a plan, Lucy?”

“Some of us stay with Adams and keep him safe. Some of us go to Massachusetts a few months ago to get Elizabeth Dana and her kids, bring her back here, and then we all jump to St. Petersburg.”

He nodded thoughtfully, jumping in and following her plan without missing a beat. “Ah. She sailed from Boston and met him in--Riga is most likely, I’d say?”

“Exactly. He sent her a letter before he left Paris. Saying it’d look better to the imperial court for him to look like a man traveling with his family to take in the culture, rather than trying directly to beg for wartime aid. Plus, with a woman on the throne, having his wife there seemed only natural.”

“She’s going to be able to take his place in St. Petersburg?”

“It was more of a non-starter as an embassy, but having an American presence in Catherine’s court will be a good thing for future diplomacy. Reznikov presumably is trying to insert himself into that role. And maybe her bed too, since that seems like a possible tactic. He may think he can sway her to be more active in her support for the Revolution.”

“Let me figure out the Reznikov plan. Obviously you need to go to Massachusetts to convince her. And naturally, Jiya pilots you. Which means Wyatt and I stay here and guard Future POTUS Number...6, if I recall right?” He cocked his head slightly aside, studying her intently. “Any major battles in Massachusetts right about now to worry about?”

“No, the fighting there was all pretty much 1777 and earlier. Jiya and I will be fine.”

He accepted that without a flicker, nodding. “All right.” She remembered what it had felt like having a partnership like that, able to intuit each other’s thoughts in a wordless communication. The fear that lay at the heart of love during wartime, holding it back only with effort sometimes, building a shield out of her utter trust in Rufus’ capability. Wanting to keep him safe, but unwilling to smother him, and Rufus had learned that too, after she’d called him out on his well-meaning condescension. 

Just then Wyatt and a scrubbed-clean John Quincy Adams came up the path between the trees, Wyatt carefully watching around him, eyes sweeping the area. Garcia walked up and clapped Wyatt on the shoulder. “Plan’s made. Guess Lucy and Jiya get to take a road trip. I saw what looked like a waypost a couple miles back where we can stay the night so we’re not causing notice in town. You and I get to star in ‘The Bodyguard.’ ”

“If you start singing Whitney Houston, Garcia, I will shoot you and bury you in the woods. Of which there are plenty.” Wyatt swept an arm out, gesturing to the tall sentinels of the pine trees.

“No John Denver, no Whitney Houston--seriously, what singers _do_ you like?”

“John Denver?” Adams piped up, brow furrowed in confusion.

“Let’s not confuse the boy more,” Jiya said in French. Which would cut Wyatt out of the conversation, but there wasn’t a better option she could think of. Arabic would cut Lucy out, unfortunately.

“I speak French, you know,” he protested, a note of petulance entering his tone. Damn. He’d been in Paris, hadn’t Lucy mentioned that? She should have thought that one through. He switched back to English, “And since you mention confusion, I think you’d best explain what on Earth is going on here!”

“We’re going to have to tell both him and Elizabeth Dana anyway,” Garcia pointed out. 

Adams’ confusion obviously only grew at that. “What about Mrs. Dana?”

Wyatt sighed, facepalming as he stood there. “Marić, Parsons, Addams, and Warne, now this--are we just on a freakin’ free-for-all on the _Tell Everyone About the Lifeboat_ Express from now on?”

“If it’s a mission necessity, yes, and we’ve had a few of those lately. It seems to have worked out,” Lucy said coolly. She sighed herself, looking at Adams. “You’d best sit down, John.” Hearing a barely smothered snicker from Garcia at that, she shot back over her shoulder at him, “Garcia, if you make a joke about opening up a window--”

“It’s not ninety degrees, _draga_. Wouldn’t dream of it.” Though he stepped forward, voice gentling somewhat as he bent over, hands on his knees to be more on the boy’s eyesight level as he addressed Adams. In that moment, Jiya could finally see in him the man who’d once been a father, instinctively trying to comfort a scared and overwhelmed boy. “You really should sit, though, to hear this. It’s been a very hard day already for you, and we’ll fix things as best we can, but this is going to sound very strange.”


	22. 3x06: A Rumor In St. Petersburg (Lucy/Garcia, Cambridge, Massachusetts/Alūksne, Latvia, March/August 1781)

The Lifeboat came to a stop with the usual lurch and thump, but Lucy’s stomach didn’t do its usual attempted gymnastics. It felt strange in the cabin with only herself, and Jiya in the turned-around pilot’s chair. Granted, usually only four of the six seats were filled on most missions, but the absence of the two men felt like a curious ache all the same. Looking at the empty seats, she found herself missing them. Even Wyatt, now that things had sort of stabilized again. And Garcia--not so much because she was afraid to go on without him. The pistol tucked beneath her petticoat in her pocket--lovingly hand-embroidered with an elaborate design of Slavic flowers, hearts, and birds, she’d almost hated to steal it from the laundry--would keep her safe.

But she missed him already. Just having him there, not necessarily right with her, but knowing he was on the mission and right nearby. As was, he was half a world and five months away from her. Keeping a future president safe, and trusting her and Jiya with this half of the mission. She’d almost been surprised that Wyatt didn’t insistently argue that one, or both, of them needed to come with to Cambridge. Maybe he’d changed too.

She’d felt like that in 1981, leaving him behind in the bunker, but less so than she did right now. Things were different between them then, still far more nebulous, still in that _I don’t know what I want from you, I only know I feel better being around you_ stage. Glancing over at Jiya, she didn’t know how the other woman had the strength to keep watching Rufus disappear into the Lifeboat and the timestream, only trusting that he’d come back. She didn’t look at the empty seats, feeling curiously like staring at them too long would be somehow inviting a day when they were empty for real. Tried to shake the memory of Jiya on the porch of the Bison Horn, sobbing and pleading with Rufus, seeing Garcia clutch his shoulder and he was so quiet and still, he was _never_ like that, and the rage and horror rising within her overcoming the fear and grief.

“We’ll get them back,” Jiya said, unbuckling her belt. “You know that. They’ll be OK.”

“I know.” She forced herself to calm down. “It’s just…it’s one thing to split up on a mission. I’ve been fine with that.” She couldn’t help but be honest. “I don’t know how you and Rufus managed it for a year and a half. It’s been only about an hour and I’m already low-key freaking out.” Undoing her harness, she rose to her feet, stretching out her cramped limbs.

Jiya’s lips curved up into a wistful smile of remembrance. “I’d buy him a box of Chocodiles--or get a box from Denise, in the bunker--and tell him he’d better come back for them, or I’d eat them all myself. Then he’d come back and we’d put on something comfy and watch or play something together, and eat that whole box of Chocodiles.”

The anthropologist in her mentally dissected that notion: ritual as a means of giving thanks, of celebration of survival, or reaffirmation of the couple bond, maybe even of a kind of post-battle purification. _So what do Garcia and I have?_ Something less concrete in shape. Vodka and pouring their hearts out to each other in his room. But she cast her memories back even further. There had been that first tentatively offered beer from him and silent support over “It Happened One Night”, at first hyper-aware of him there next to her, how as a big man he took up so much of the couch. He’d had a lousy day, from how he came back from 1934 frazzled, clothes torn, and loudly complaining about being left behind with his usual snark. She had to think now that he’d spent the day genuinely afraid that they’d abandoned him. Probably told himself with a rueful, glib laugh of _Well, I tried to do it to them in 1754, it’s only fair. Or maybe they were hoping three sleepers would be enough to get rid of me._ Probably assumed that with her out of commission that Rufus and Wyatt would gladly be rid of him, and he probably wouldn’t have been wrong. Likely it was only Denise’s insistence in keeping him as an asset that made them go back at that point. 

She’d long thought of that night between them as another debt owed--he’d had a crappy day running around 1934 hunting multiple sleepers alone, and yet he’d been there for her right when she’d needed someone after insistently pushing Wyatt back towards Jessica and letting him go. It could have felt like a cynical ploy, him moving in right when she was alone and heartbroken, but that wasn’t it. He’d always respected the distance between them, then and even now as it gradually closed. But it struck her now that he’d probably needed her as much that night as she’d needed him, desperately wanted to be around the one person in the bunker at that point who he believed he could probably trust for not preferring him dead or gone. Knowing him better now, some part of her suspected he’d been as scared to grab that beer and sit down beside her like he assumed he had a right to do so, fully prepared for her to storm off in a huff, as he’d been at being left behind. 

It wasn’t the alcohol. Maybe it wasn’t even the movies, because they’d decompressed in other ways, talking, sparring, dancing, once even him helping her make dinner. It was being together, not needing to say anything, but able to talk if it was needed. Though maybe there was something to be said for a more formalized ritual to help put aside the burden of the mission. She’d have to work on that.

Climbing out the Lifeboat hatch, carefully sliding to the ground, she glanced back up at Jiya. “Guess I should find our Chocodiles. So to speak.” Jiya hit the ground next to her. “We’ll get him back, you know.”

Jiya shook her head. “I know you mean well, Lucy, but don’t make promises. We’ll all do our best, and our chances are so much better than they were five months ago. We’re better. We’re stronger. But there’s no guarantee. I have to accept that bringing Rufus back isn’t a given, or...I can’t live with myself if we fail.” 

“Fair enough,” she said. 

Jiya clicked the cloaking button and the Lifeboat disappeared from the middle of the pasture, right near a low stone wall. She nodded towards it. “No trees. They’ve cut them all down for pasture. Hopefully no sheep come out to graze this way today. Or really, no shepherds.”

“It’s fine. If someone bumps into something invisible, they’re not going to be able to decloak the Lifeboat without the remote. They’re also not going to talk about it except a few cups deep in the local tavern. Their friends will razz them, and it’ll be another weird folklore tale. It’s eighty years after Salem. The Enlightenment’s already happened.”

Jiya glanced at her as they headed on the road into Cambridge. “Are you thinking about Rufus because we’re going to tell a woman that she’s a widow five months into her future?”

It might have unnerved her to be so easily read. “Some of that. Some also that I saw the wires on the console where we’re starting work on the Lifeline.” She couldn’t help but reach over, put a hand on Jiya’s shoulder as they walked. “We’re so close. Maybe another month.”

“I know.” Jiya gave a racked, shuddering breath. “The path’s narrowing because we’re getting closer and closer. It was one thing when it was months and months away. And it’s both the best and worst thing in the world. It’s here, but _it’s here_.”

She understood. The wait was almost over, but the point of no return was coming. Either they’d succeed and bring Rufus back, or they’d have to give up on him. Connor had made it clear that they probably only got one shot at this, that to get a do-over again and again might screw up the fabric of reality so badly that none of them could justify it, even for Rufus. _Even if he’s exactly the key to winning this war?_ Was that why that other version of herself came back? Was it that Rufus held some kind of skill or knowledge they’d need, or that losing him had shattered the team in a way Rittenhouse had exploited? The Lifeline and the project to get Rufus back had been determined common purpose that pulled them back together, made them a team all over again, in ways that let them stop Emma. 

If they hadn’t had that, what might have happened? That future happened, and she doubted they’d dressed up like Walking Dead extras for shock value. They were living in some kind of dystopia, presumably where Rittenhouse succeeded. Maybe they didn’t need Rufus per se as a second pilot and scientist. But they hadn’t really _needed_ Garcia as a second soldier either, but no denying it came in handy. Mostly it was that both of them brought something far more than their skills to the team. They brought something to the dynamic that made it stronger and better. They might function effectively enough as a team without Rufus, but they all recognized the hole that existed in his absence.

“At least we’ll have testing to focus on,” Jiya said, the two of them pulling to the side of the road for a farmer passing with a wagon heaped high with hay, one wheel creaking alarmingly. Lucy got barely a second glance, but Jiya got a longer look. “Ah, trying to figure out what I am. As usual. Guessing there aren’t many biracial black people here like down South, so what’s the local native tribe if I’m asked--?”

“Wampanoag,” Lucy replied. “And they won’t ask. They’ll assume.”

“Yeah, you’re right. I’m your maidservant, right?”

She sighed, hating it as ever. “Yeah. You’d likely be my servant, or my bondswoman.”

“Lucy, not like I’m not used to it. At least here, if they assume I’m native or half-black or Mexican, I’m invisible. Back home? I was ten when 9/11 happened. Explaining to other kids in your elementary school that your family is very secular Muslim, and Al Qaeda really had nothing to do with Lebanon, at least then, didn’t do much good. For a couple of weeks Mom was scared to go buy groceries. She and Dad were worried about going to work. Eventually after he died, she went back home because she missed her family, and I think she was tired of the mistrust. And we were in Lansing. Big college town. Supposedly enlightened.”

“I’m sorry.” There didn’t seem to be much more that she could say than awkward, guilty apologies.

Jiya accepted that with a nod. “Where’s Elizabeth--Liz?--live?” 

“Eliza. And we’ll probably have to ask. There’s likely a plaque in the twenty-first century--or was? Maybe still will be. But I don’t have it memorized.”

Stopping a peddler heading out of town, his bay horse stopping to nose the grass at the roadside, ribbons and lace and other bits of swag and trim poking out of his saddlebags, she asked if he knew where the Danas lived. Pointing back towards town, he directed them to a house near Harvard College. “Red door,” he said. His face lit up, creasing in a broad grin, brown eyes warm and friendly. “Interest you ladies in some lace, ribbons, good brass buttons? I’m on my way to Salem next.”

“We’re good Patriot ladies, sir, and chances are your goods may have come through British imports. We’ll have to respectfully decline.”

The grin didn’t fade. “Aye, I respect that. But a man’s got a make a living, and well, sometimes that living lets him overhear things...you wouldn’t believe how Loyalist ladies chatter.” 

Was this a member of the Culper Ring? She didn’t remember a ribbon peddler, but then, so many of the identities of the ring were unknown. “Have you heard of a Mr. Roe?” She wasn’t sure whether Garcia left him dead in a ditch in this timeline. “I heard there was some...unpleasantness last fall down New York way.”

His gaze sharpened, turned to a mix of respect and admiration. “You were involved in that business with Arnold and Rittenhouse? We up here never knew for sure.”

“My--husband, my friends, and I.” She made sure to gesture to Jiya also.

He fished in his saddlebag, pulling out a cranberry red ribbon. “For you, then, one friend to another. Darker than lobsterback, eh? So it’s safe. But it’ll look a treat against that dark hair of yours when your husband comes home.” She took it, wrapping the sleek silkiness of it around her hand for a moment before tucking it in her pocket alongside the pistol, noting wryly that no such similar offer came to Jiya.

Bidding him farewell, it was only another ten minutes of walking, past the neat red brick houses and stone walls and walkways of Harvard. “I’m really trying to not have ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ flashes here,” Jiya muttered.

Near the common, they found the house with the red door and knocked. A woman answered, dark haired and grey eyed, petite and a little plump. Lucy heard the the sound of babbling childrens’ laughter towards the back of the house. “Mrs. Elizabeth Dana?” she asked. She had to ask, given she’d never seen a portrait of the woman. Didn’t even know if one existed. Just another woman rendered more or less anonymous by history. 

“I am Mrs. Dana, yes.” She wiped her hands on her apron. “What is your business?” Tone polite, but inquiring all the same. She took in their clothing, much as the peddler had, probably noticing the subtle differences of Eastern Europe here and there. Thankfully for everyday clothing, it wasn’t much different at all.

“We’ve traveled a long way with news,” Jiya said.

“I’m Alice Munro,” because why not go for “Last Of The Mohicans” while she was at it, “and this is my sister, Cora.” Screw it. Might as well claim that, especially for the five minutes until it got them in the door and they could tell her the truth. “We bring news from across the sea for you.”

Dana’s eyes lit up at that, and she smiled broadly. From the way it crinkled her eyes, she obviously smiled often. “From Francis? Oh, do come in! His letters arrive so rarely.” She wiped her hands hastily on the apron, leaving traces of soot. “Hannah,” she called, “some coffee for us?” No tea, of course. Not in a Patriot household in America during the Revolution. 

They were shown to a small parlor, and Dana excused herself to clean up from her working clothes. Hannah brought the coffee, a tiny woman who probably barely cleared five feet.

“Hannah, is it? Are you a slave?” Jiya asked her softly, looking at her awkwardly, obviously jarred to see a black woman in service--or potential slavery--in the North. But Massachusetts wouldn’t abolish slavery for another two years, and that only after a court case.

“No, ma’am, I work for wages,” Hannah answered her. “Mr. Dana won’t have no slaves.” Given his grandson, or the man who no longer would be his grandson now, Richard Henry Dana Jr., had been an abolitionist, and the extended Dana family who moved west helped with the Underground Railroad, somehow Lucy wasn’t surprised.

“What’s your full name?’ Somehow it seemed important to hear it. Slaves didn’t have last names, or if they did, they were the last names of their masters.

“Hannah Greene, ma’am. Was Hanna Truecott, till I married my Lewis.”

Dana came downstairs then. “Thank you, Hannah.” Greene at that point nodded, left the coffee, and headed back to what was likely yet another of the interminable chores of household management back in the days before so many appliances.

“There’s no easy way to say this.” Jiya fished in her pocket, pulling out the letter that John Quincy Adams had briefly scrawled back in the Latvian woods. “This is from John Quincy Adams, for you.”

“John? But why would Francis not write me himself? That means…” She reached for it, almost snatching it from Jiya’s fingers, cracking the wax seal. Ordinary candle wax, and they’d had no seal, so they’d awkwardly pressed it with the bottom of a candlestick at the waystation before they left Adams, Garcia, and Wyatt.

They let her read a letter dated five months in the future, in handwriting she must recognize, given Adams was something of a surrogate son to the Danas. Presumably telling her that her husband was dead, that young Adams had seen the Lifeboat, their real names and purpose, and that this incredible fantasy they were going to spin was the whole truth.

She read it twice, if Lucy judged properly from where her eyes jumped from the bottom of the page back to the top and then slowly down again. Then she sat back heavily in her chair. “So you are actually Lucy Preston and--Jiya Marri? Am I pronouncing that correctly?” Not quite, but Jiya nodded stiffly. “My husband has been killed in the Russian wilderness, on his way to the court of the Empress. And not by British agents, but by some--strange cabal from almost two and a half centuries from now?”

“That...about sums it up.”

Her eyes narrowed, a grey so dark it almost seemed like ominous clouds rolling with thunder in the afternoon sunlight streaming through the parlor windows. “How do I know that you haven’t taken young John prisoner and forced him to write this?”

They’d thought about that, or actually, Adams had. He was almost alarmingly smart for a fourteen-year-old, but then, he’d become one of America’s most learned and intelligent presidents. “He told us to tell you about the time your cat had kittens and he begged his father for one, but old John refused to let him keep the all-black one. Ill luck, he said.” Some omens were still alive and well near Salem.

Dana sat back more easily then, the immediate danger passed, but Lucy could see the sag to her shoulders as the weight of grief settled on her, unbearably heavy. Jiya made a low, soothing noise. “I know. They killed the man I loved too.”

She sighed, allowing herself a moment of her head in her hands. But like most Founding Mothers, she was made of stern stuff. “I wrote Abigail this spring that my greatest wish and hope was that we should be able to sit down again with the objects of our affection. John and Francis have been gone so long, and...now it seems I’ll never see him again. I cannot thank you for bringing me this news, but I thank you for carrying the heavy burden of it. But what am I to do that you would bring this letter so urgently, and reveal all these strange secrets by it? And where is young John? Why did you not bring him back, or take him to his father in Paris?”

“We need you to join this fight, Eliza. Your husband was a fierce Patriot, courageous enough to go overseas with John Adams to help seek allies for Americans. Your own father, William Ellery, signed the Declaration of Independence for Rhode Island when he knew it might earn him a traitor’s death. I have to believe you love your country as much as they do, and you’d fight for it.”

Her gaze was steady, almost stern. “What would you have me do?” she repeated. 

“Come back with us. Become an American presence in Catherine’s court, because that creates the fewest ripples and will help beat the plan Rittenhouse is trying to put in place, as opposed to the long process of getting the Continental Congress to appoint someone else. Bring your children,” because clearly she had some, from the sounds continuing from another room of the house. “How many do you have?”

“Two sons that are living. Young Francis is almost four, and Edmund is not yet two. Our first Edmund would have been seven this summer.” 

“Tell your neighbors we brought a report that Francis was taken ill in Paris, and you wished to hurry to him. That will explain your leaving so quickly. But we heard wrongly, the illness wasn’t that bad. You found that out when you landed in Ghent, and also that he’d already left for Russia, so you took ship to Riga to try to meet him there as you and the children had already traveled so far. By the time you got there, you found young John telling you the grim news that bandits had murdered Francis. You write a letter to Congress saying that you’re proceeding forward on Francis’ behalf, but will step aside should they send someone else.”

“I doubt it. Francis’ letters of the last months were full of frustrations at having his hands tied with contradictory demands. He suspected little success was possible once he went, but go he still would, because it was his duty, and because there was the hope that the Empress could be swayed into demonstrating greater friendship towards our nation.” She exhaled sharply. “So you say that this is how I may best serve America. By going to the court of the Empress and representing my people, and I suppose also by taking care of young John until such point as we reunite with his father.” 

“Exactly.” She leaned in, meeting Dana’s eyes. “Will you do it?”

She paused, which made Lucy respect her all the more. Travel to a foreign nation in this day and age was no small thing. She likely didn’t speak the language, either Russian, or the French that was the language of the nobility in Catherine’s court. With communication as it was, she would be very alone, plus she doubted the Continental Congress would bother much with her, something of an afterthought of a failed mission. Plus she had two small children, and had learned ten minutes ago that her husband had been murdered. But she had courage. “I will. Give me a few hours to set my affairs in order, and pack my things. I’ll tell Abigail I’m leaving and see if she has letters for her kin, and I’ll have to pay off Hannah for some future wages so that she and Lewis might be sound until she finds work in another house. Perhaps Abigail might have need of her.”

“We’ll watch the kids if you want,” Jiya offered impulsively. “Help make it easier.”

It said something that Elizabeth Dana would trust her kids to two strangers who showed up with a letter and a bizarre tale, but they found themselves upstairs in the small bedroom of the two living Dana sons. Young Francis and Edmund were so little, so young that they still dressed in the gowns that all young children wore in this era. They’d be seven or eight before they were allowed to wear breeches. Young enough to hopefully not remember much, if anything, about the Lifeboat. Kneeling and watching Francis play with a wooden sheep and dog on the floor, thinking wryly that she wished her thirty-five-year-old knees would stop broadcasting their encroaching age, she looked over at Jiya. “Do we know the Lifeboat can handle kids safely?”

“Lucy, it’s mass-based math. Not anything about souls or whatever.” Jiya told her matter-of-factly. “The men all have what, like fifty pounds plus on us? But we manage to send whatever combo of us safely, because there’s a mass tolerance range built in. Things got messed up in 1954 because we hadn’t programmed the mass tolerance high enough for me to throw an additional hundred and twenty in there. We still almost maxed it out on the JFK mission because swapping Garcia in for you threw an additional seventy or seventy-five pounds onto that tolerance range.”

“Seventy-five, then. Maybe sixty, sixty five now,” she said, tongue-in-cheek. She’d gained a good bit of weight since then, both in muscle, and in regaining some of the weight she’d lost due to being so damn depressed. 

“These kids,” she gestured to Edmund napping, and Francis playing with his toys, “weigh less than fifty pounds. Jessica, even eight months pregnant, could make it. After all, she’d still weigh less than Garcia.”

Sensing the tension suddenly in the air at a mention of a pregnant Jessica in the Lifeboat, she couldn’t resist teasing. “What, are you calling him fat?”

“No, he’s not, he’s just freakin’ giant.” She smirked at Lucy, lowering her voice. “I imagine you’ve thought about getting him in bed, but have you actually thought about how that’s going to work? He’s like eight feet tall.”

So maybe she’d given it a thought or two. “Jiya!” Her shock evaporated enough for her to blurt defensively, “How do you know we haven’t?” It was stupid, but she didn’t want questions, expectations, judgment. What they had between them was, as he said, theirs. 

Jiya shot her a _seriously, don’t be an idiot_ look. “You had a chance to change that six weeks ago when we moved, but you’re still sleeping apart.”

She looked away, suddenly bashful. “We’re taking it slow.” After all, Jiya was one of the few people who’d sympathized when she was lying in the bunker, cut down by the infection in her arm, telling her that she understood. She hadn’t judged her as stupid or reckless for having jumped at the chance with Wyatt.

“That’s probably a good thing, for both of you. And it’s good he’s being...respectful, I guess? Just don’t go so slow you come to to a total halt.” Jiya toyed with the silver ring on her thumb. “Rufus and I missed our chance for a couple of years because he thought I wasn’t interested, and I thought he wasn’t. Just two nerds passing in the night.”

“Then we’ll hope to get you more time with him.”

Francis toddled up to her and snuggled into her lap. “Story?” he asked, looking up at her with a hopeful smile.

She couldn’t help but be reminded of Amy. Seven years older as she was, Lucy could well remember Amy as a baby, a toddler, a preschooler. Crawling into Lucy’s bed at night, scared from the thunder or a nightmare, snuggling up with her head right on Lucy’s shoulder. Amy’s small body hot against hers, smelling that strawberry shampoo, listening to Amy ask, “Tell me a story?”

This boy didn’t remember, but he’d lost a brother already. He might lose more. Strange as it sounded, it felt like a comfort to remember she wasn’t alone. So many people throughout history had lost a beloved sibling, and bore up under the grief. Carding her fingers through that silky-fine dark hair, she began telling him “Charlotte’s Web”. It had always been one of Amy’s favorites. She’d always cried when Charlotte died.

The shadows in the room lengthened, drawing deeper into late afternoon and then dusk, and as she finished the story for Francis and a now-awake Edmund, she finally heard footsteps on the stairs. Their mother came in, looking at the two women in an undignified heap sitting on the floor with her children, and Lucy saw her smile at it nonetheless. “Come then, Francis, Edmund. It seems we’re about to go on a grand adventure.”

It was almost twilight by the time they got the carter to drop them off at the Lifeboat, Dana convincing him that they would stay overnight with the Reece family nearby before continuing their journey in the morning. The crowded Lifeboat had little room extra, but they just managed to jam the few trunks containing all the Dana family’s important possessions for traveling in.

Helping buckle the kids into the harnesses sized for adults, they had to get creative with a box of bungee straps tucked in the emergency supplies, along with trying to use the rest of them to secure the trunks as best as possible. 

Then they jumped, back to Latvia and five months in the future. It was nighttime now, so dark out in the forest without bright city lights, what stars she could see through the thick towering skyward spears of the pine trees vivid and sharp. Probably the middle of the night to judge. 

Helping unfasten Edmund, Dana turned to Jiya and asked, “What was his name? The man you were--courting?”

Jiya paused for a moment. “I’ll show you,” she said. She popped open the hatch and retrieved the blue poly bag of the Memory Cache. Lucy watched her digging. Amy’s two tiny locket pictures were in there. So were a few pictures Garcia had of Lorena and Iris: his wedding picture, and Iris’ last birthday. He’d shown them to her, once, in the weeks after Denise gave them to him. She’d asked, wanting to see the faces of the people he was fighting for, the ones he’d loved so fiercely. The weeks of calm before everything went to hell with the Harriet Tubman mission, and then Chinatown.

He’d looked so young, so happy in his wedding picture. Thirty-one years old, dressed in a tux next to Lorena in ivory silk and lace, beaming in a way she’d seen only a few times, so briefly. Smiling like that too with his daughter, on her last birthday on Earth, a man who loved and was loved. It broke her heart to see both of them, forever lost to him, and the man he’d been before Rittenhouse took everything, sent him on the run. 

But he’d fought his way back from that. She could see that man again, a man who still fought every bit as hard as the ruthless near-monster she’d encountered two years ago, but who could find space to smile and laugh. He’d taken off his ring, given it to Jane Addams. Neither of them had taken it further than that, but there had been something different between them in the weeks since then, a new sort of tension. _Possibility_ , she’d had to name it. Like Jiya’s fear of approaching the moment they would or wouldn’t save Rufus. 

So long as that ring stayed on, so long as they hadn’t kissed, hadn’t slept together, hadn’t let go those final barriers, they could still retreat mostly unscathed. She loved him, and he loved her. That wouldn’t change. But there were so many kinds of love. They could keep it chaste, partners and best friends, something sweet and fine and tender and one of the best things she’d ever had in her life, but without the potential to really, truly hurt. She could stuff down the ache for him until it withered away to nothing.

But he’d taken the ring off, and more importantly, he’d done that after he’d almost kissed her, but told her that he meant for them to make time for each other. She knew what he meant by it. They were in dangerous territory now, something new and unexplored. Caution seemed right, didn’t it? But Jiya was right too. Too long without acting might make the whole thing fall apart, and they’d miss any chance for it to transform to something different.

She watched Jiya cradle a picture of her with Rufus in her hands, offering it to Dana. “This is Rufus. We can capture images in the future, like this.”

To her credit, in a day of strange things, she took the existence of photographs as one more bump in the rocky road, and didn’t question it. Taking the picture, she looked at it closely for a few long moments. “I’m sorry,” she told Jiya, voice oddly gentle. “I had seen that so many women have lost husbands, sons, brothers in the rebellion already. But the worthiness of the cause doesn’t take all the pain.”

“No.” With one last longing look, Jiya slid the photo back in the Memory Cache. “But it gives you something to fight for, and that keeps them alive in a way, doesn’t it?” As Lucy swung down out of the Lifeboat and held her arms up, Jiya picked up Edmund first. “All right, little man, let’s get you out of here.”

~~~~~~~~~~

After sending Lucy and Jiya off with John Quincy Adams’ letter, they’d been busy enough themselves. Getting Adams’ trunk off the carriage, and Dana’s also so that hopefully his wife could choose anything she wanted to keep, was a chore enough. Wrestling the carriage over to the side of the road was no easy chore either, and he and Wyatt were two men more or less in their prime, but there was no way they could handle two horses’ bodies. Those would have to be left in the road for now until someone with another draft animal could drag them off and help clear it.

Then a wagon came along, a middle aged man and his son, the bed of the wagon empty, so apparently they’d been delivering something somewhere. He didn’t even try Croatian. Balto-Slavic both Latvian and Croatian might be, but Latvian leaned heavily on the former and Croatian on the latter, so it’d probably be a lot more of a pain in the ass than trying to use his Spanish down in Brazil where Portuguese was the native tongue. He tried Russian, and while the man wasn’t fluent in it, enough Russian trickled over the border when Russia carved Latvia away from Poland that they managed to make themselves decently understood.

“What are you claiming, we’re Prussian?” Wyatt asked uncomfortably in English.

He put a look of confusion on his face, answering Wyatt in Farsi, because he’d bet if the man had served in Afghanistan for years, he knew the language, “Shut up and pretend we don’t know each other.” No, claiming to be Prussian would be a bad idea, given Russia and Frederick the Great’s Prussia had been at war off and on for a few decades by now. He’d claim to be Russian himself. Easier than to explain, and given the guy would probably prefer to just forget this all happened by tomorrow, it wasn’t like it would affect the mission going forward. 

“So you come from the east?” the man said, introducing himself as Juris Liepiņš, and his son, maybe in his mid-twenties, as Maksim. “What were you doing on the road?”

“I’m Colonel Leo Tolstoy, on my way back to St. Petersburg after delivering a message, and my horse gave out about three miles back,” he said with frustration. “Damn beast was nervous, but it was the only one I could get in Vilnius. I stopped for a piss, and something spooked it and it ran. I was walking to Alūksne to see if I could hire another. Then while I was walking I found this man and boy hiding near this ruined carriage. I don’t speak their language--I think maybe they’re British? But it seems bandits killed one of them,” he nodded towards Dana’s body, where they’d laid it carefully alongside the road, and covered it with a navy blue cloak that had been in Dana’s trunk. “I think from what the man’s telling me--Thomas?--that they wounded one of them and scared them off. But obviously they’re stranded for the night.”

Liepiņš sighed, fingers scratching at the dark blond-and-silver stubble covering his cheeks and jaw. “Shit. Maks and I were in Riga for the monthly market day selling our fabric, and we’ve a long ways to go yet. We were hoping to make Alsviķi, waystation tonight. If we lived in Alūksne we would offer you our house.”

“It’s all right. We can stay at the waystation tonight,” he said. “I can get to Alūksne tomorrow, get a horse, and maybe see about finding someone who can talk to these two. But we need to get their things to the waystation, and,” he glanced at Dana, “see about burying this man.”

Liepiņš nodded, jaw tightening. “He was a guest in our lands. And if he comes from so far away, yes, then he must be buried now. Let it not be said that he was left to rot for the crows. Maks, get the horses hitched up to the corpses so can get them from the road. Then we should get the trunks to the waystation. They will have a shovel there and we can come back.” 

 

“Thank you. It’s kind of you to take such time for strangers.” Stripping off his jacket and waistcoat, putting them on the rough-hewn wagon seat, he helped Maks tie the traces to one of the dead horses, trying to keep his anger at such senseless waste of good and gentle animals to himself. Rittenhouse had plenty of blood on their hands, Francis Dana’s today for certain, and some people might think it was stupid for him to be upset about horses, especially given he’d killed plenty of human beings himself. But it bothered him nonetheless. Wyatt jumped to help, not able to communicate, but smart enough to see what task was at hand. Liepiņš and Adams moved to get the trunks in the wagon bed. “Why do you live so far from Riga if you’re a fabric merchant?” he asked Maks.

His jaw tightened. “You must know as well as any other about the Pale of Settlement and most Jews are not welcome to live in Riga anymore. We can do business there, but my family is not wealthy. We aren’t educated. And so my grandfather’s family was forced to go west when Tsar Peter’s forces took Riga from Sweden sixty years ago.” 

“Maks,” Liepiņš said, a warning in his tone, and a look of concern in his eyes as he looked at Garcia. No, it wouldn’t do to piss off the people in power, would it? It wasn’t like the Holocaust happened in isolation. Anti-Semitism was alive and well in most of Europe at this time, had been for centuries. Russians would enact various pogroms against the Jews, killing them, evicting them, restricting where they could live. It wasn’t all “Fiddler On The Roof”.

This was a history it was harder for the Americans to understand. They had their own bloodstained hands. The things they’d done to Africans, to Asians, to the native tribes, stood etched in stone as the racial shames they were. But like he’d tried to tell Wyatt once, the bloody ethnic and religious wars--America had mostly escaped those. They’d been prejudiced as hell, yes, but it hadn’t broken out into violence on the scale of pogroms or actual war. Virtually no European nation could say the same. Croatia had its own World War Two shame to bear, the Ustaše who’d seized control of the country so violently fascist, nationalistic, and genocidal that it seemed like they’d even tried to outdo the Nazis with the concentration camps and the oppression and murder of Jews, Roma, Serbs, and pretty much anyone else they didn’t like. That put the ethnic tension simmering in Yugoslavia since Versailles starting to simmer hotly. Some of those chickens came home to roost fifty years later in the Serbian justification for their dominance of Yugoslavia, and unwillingness to let Slavonia or Croatia be free nations, due to their own persecution then. 

The things done by all sides in that war sometimes defied belief. He’d been seventeen when they’d passed by the rumored mass grave at Ovčara, where they’d supposedly slaughtered men from the Vukovar hospital the previous fall. The tip of a shoe poked out from the ground muddy and soft with the spring thaw. The UN hadn’t been able to get investigators there for years, able to only protect the site so it couldn’t be covered up. He’d been naive enough as a teenager to believe that only the Serbs were doing horrible things, murdering and raping and bombing and destroying. Maybe the lion’s share of war crime horror fell on them, yes, as the International Criminal Court had agreed, but no nation or people involved were innocent. War made monsters on all sides. He’d seen it there. He’d seen it in Chechyna, Somalia, Darfur, Iraq, Afghanistan, and now in this war too. It had made a monster of him. There had been a time two years ago he probably would have killed this man and his son, not because they were Jews, but simply because it was tidier to not have them as witnesses asking inconvenient questions, and he could use their horses.  
“I’m sorry,” he said. “For what it’s worth, the Pale is an idiotic policy.”

That seemed to ease some of the tension, and the conversation returned as they got the horses off the road, got to the waystation and dropped the trunks, then came back with the shovel. With four grown men, the digging went quickly, but Adams surprised them by demanding to take his turn. Thin and boyish as his frame still was, his strength gave out quicker, but he only reluctantly let Wyatt reach a hand down to him in the hole and pull him out, studying his blistered palms, closing his fingers around them. He could see something of the future president in the boy, the fierce conviction to do the right thing, watching everything with a careful eye, taking it in, listening and learning even if he couldn’t understand the conversation.

His shoulder hurt like hell by the time they were done, and he would have abandoned his shirt in the August heat, as he suspected Wyatt would, but with a glance, both of them seemed to reject the idea. Too many scars to explain. They buried Dana as the late afternoon sun touched the tops of the trees, and Adams prayed over him, reciting the 23rd Psalm in a clear voice that didn’t tremble for all that he’d been through that day. He found himself putting a hand on the boy’s shoulder in reassurance.

Dropped off at the waystation, he waved the father and son farewell. Adams gave them his silver pocketwatch. “It’s from my father,” he said, eyes suddenly shining a little too brightly. “But they should have it. For the help they gave us.”

“I think it’s from his father,” he told Maks. “But obviously he want you to have it.”

Maks closed his fingers around it, green eyes widening with sympathy, and handed it to his father. “I wouldn’t refuse this. Especially if his father was the man killed. It would insult him.”

“I understand the American colonies are maybe friendlier to Jews than here in the East.”

“Aren’t they at war?”

“Yes, but if they win, might not be a bad place to go.” He shrugged, trying to sound nonchalant. Better to sell it as good advice than to try to plead with them to get out in case of what might happen in a hundred and sixty years to Jews remaining in Eastern Europe.

They watched the wagon go down the road. “So what was all that?” Wyatt asked finally.

Standing there in a shirt sticking to him with sweat and the linen smeared here and there with grave dirt, his hair soaked with sweat, Wyatt and Adams didn’t look much better. “Let’s clean up first,” he said wearily. “Then it looks like there’s some traveler’s provisions here for us to chew on.”

Cleaning up as best they could in the stream, sluicing off the sweat and then beating his shirt against some rocks to try to clean some of the dirt out, they walked back to the wayhouse carrying wet shirts. Adams, to his credit, didn’t ask about the scars riddling both his and Wyatt’s torsos. He didn’t look at Wyatt too long on that. He’d faulted the man’s inability to get over himself, and his anger and impulsiveness, but he would never have accused him of battlefield cowardice. He wasn’t surprised that his career was written on his hide every bit as much as Garcia’s own.

Adams collapsed quickly, already tired from the long travel from Paris, and clearly mentally exhausted from his ordeal today. It was a rough plank shelf in a loft with a prickly hay mattress that might or might not need fumigation, but Adams fell asleep almost immediately, curled in on himself protectively. Garcia pulled the blanket up over those thin, boyish shoulders, climbing down the ladder and sitting on a bench near the lantern that Wyatt had lit. Their shirts hung from various surfaces, drying slowly, but it was a sticky summer night and that would help. He wasn’t cold because of it, at least.

Wyatt spoke first, arms wrapped around his knees. “Poor kid. His family’s back in the States, and he not only got sent to France, then he took a joyride to Russia with a man who just got killed. He’s only, what, thirteen or so?”

“They grew up faster historically, didn’t they? Hamilton was basically running a trading charter at fourteen.” 

“Thank you for quoting the musical.” Wyatt gave a wry grin of acknowledgment at that. OK, so maybe he was a little guilty of pandering to the audience, but he’d take it. 

“And maybe so, but it’s a lot. You ran away at fifteen. I did too. I was fighting a war at sixteen. You were at eighteen. Doesn’t mean we can’t admit that we thought we were so grown up then, when we really were just boys in over our heads.” He felt like he could barely remember himself at fifteen, sixteen, eighteen anymore. Half a lifetime gone, and so many bridges crossed and even burned, so many experiences and things said and done that had shaped him, things that couldn’t be undone, long before he’d been thirty-nine and Rittenhouse shattered his world. 

“Yeah, well, life roughed us up pretty quickly. Looks like Rittenhouse did the same to him.”

Garcia thought about Adams down at the stream mere minutes after the murder, hands shaking as he fought to tie a black stock around his neck, tucking the ends inside his waistcoat. Lucy explained that a child wouldn’t wear that, much like a modern necktie. Trying to hard to master himself, trying so hard to be an adult. He remembered being twelve, still at the tail end of in his cowboy phase, and his father kneeling in front of him, helping show him how to tie his first necktie. It was for his dad’s best friend’s daughter’s wedding, and he didn’t really want to go, but the chance to dress up like a grownup, be counted as someone finally entering into that mysterious and wonderful room of adulthood, felt like it was worth it. It was one of the good memories of Ilija “Asher” Flynn, the light in his whiskey-brown eyes as he smiled, humming The Beatles “Yellow Submarine” to himself, correcting him carefully and patiently when he messed up the knot. When he did it right, he laughed, kissing Garcia on each cheek--Americans were so uptight about things like that--and gripping him by the shoulders, smiling at him. _You’re getting towards being a man, aren’t you, **mali**?_ Touching his cheek gently, then ruffling his hair. _But don’t grow up too fast._

Orphan of World War Two as he was, Asher hadn’t known how to be a father. Hadn’t known how to deal with a wife who still mourned her dead husband and son, when he still mourned his dead wife, but as choosily Catholic as he was on some things, Garcia had heard him thunder one night at Maria that no, divorce would never be an option. He couldn’t admit he’d made a mistake. 

He’d thought for a long time that he had to be everything Asher wasn’t. It was Lorena, and time, and perspective that let him see that his father had hurt him, hurt his wife, but he wasn’t a monster. Just a man overwhelmed, unable to escape the cage he’d built around himself. So unable that he’d killed himself when Garcia was nineteen. The official story was that a particularly brutal murder case, three dead kids, had pushed Detective Flynn over the edge. That had contributed, but it was two decades of buildup before that too. 

The flickers of rage were still there sometimes towards his father, but the pity was there too, and the memories of good moments. He’d managed to forgive him his failures sometime during Lorena’s pregnancy, because he couldn’t do otherwise and hope to be a father himself.

He was his father’s son in some ways. He’d never raised a hand to Iris, or Lorena. But the killing rage was there within him, and he too had been ready to die, finally escape the cage he’d put himself in where he wasn’t fit to be on this Earth anymore. He was lucky. He’d had the right person there to fight for him. Neither Maria nor Asher had been right for each other on that. He looked up towards the loft. “Whoever Dana specifically was to him, I suspect I know. And the man must have been a father.” 

“How so?”

“Because he knew he was likely going to die. But he didn’t try to run, or fight. He pushed the boy to the floor of the carriage and covered him. He tried to protect him, or hide him. Seconds to make a choice, and that was the most important thing to him.” He flicked a quick glance Wyatt’s way, not quite meeting his eyes. “You’ll understand that soon enough. Maybe some part of you does already.” 

If he could have flung himself over Iris that night, he would have done so, no question about it. But he hadn’t had the chance. Maybe his own father, complicated as the relationship was, would have done the same for him.  
Wyatt looked away, staring at the flickering lantern like the answers were written there in the tiny flame. “I’ve already screwed up so much. With Jess. With a kid who’s not even born yet.”

“You’re only doomed if you give up on yourself, idiot, and say you’ve gone too far to come back. She’s said she’s leaving Rittenhouse. She sent what intel she had on this mission.” He knew more than his share about regret and atonement. “She’s got guts, I’ll give her that.”

“I’m sorry. About your daughter. For you to have done what you did, I know you loved her.”

It was a screwed up kind of validation, but given it wasn’t Wyatt wanting to put him down like a mad dog, or throw him back in a prison cell, he’d take it. His throat felt too tight, like he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak. “Thanks.”

“And you and Lucy, I mean...I won’t…it’s cool, you know?”

He slanted an annoyed look at Wyatt. “I wasn’t aware we needed your blessing. Congratulations on being magnanimous about something that’s not your place, Wyatt.”

“Seriously, sometimes I forget what an asshole you are, and then you have to go remind me.” But he smiled as he said it, an awkward boyish smile.

“Right back at you.” Danil had been his brother, and then something more. Gabriel--that seemed to be going well, but there were so many years lost, and so many years between them. He’d always be the little brother there. Maybe here he had another brother, something that was sometimes bickering and contentious, but they’d stick by each other, in battle and out, and the thought brought some comfort.

The knock came at the door, and Wyatt jumped up to answer it, grabbing his shirt and pulling it on, throwing Garcia’s to him. He tugged it on over his head. Still slightly damp, but it would do. He looked up to see Adams had stirred--or more likely been listening for a while--and come to the edge of the ledge. Wyatt opened the door and Jiya and Lucy stood there, a woman with two small kids accompanying them. 

Adams scampered down the ladder, rushing to hug the woman, who bent down to hold him tightly. He looked at Lucy, seeing the flush of pride on her face. Of course she’d gotten it done. He would hardly have believed otherwise. “Honey, we’re home,” Lucy said, giving him a shy grin. “And we brought company.”


	23. 3x06: A Rumor In St. Petersburg (Lucy/Garcia, St. Petersburg, Russia, August 1781)

The Lifeboat dropped in a little ways past Ropsha, where an imprisoned Peter III following Catherine’s coup nearly 20 years before had died during a “drunken quarrel” with the Orlov brothers, including Catherine’s then-lover, Grigori. They’d managed the jump with the six seats they had, with Jiya doing some fast calculations that they could manage it within the weight tolerance. Dana holding a squirming Edmund bungee-corded to her harness, Adams likewise clutching baby Francis, they’d jumped, and nobody seemed the worse for the wear. 

Finding a fast carriage, and cramming five adults, a teen boy, and a toddler and a preschooler into it, was no mean trick, but they managed it. She was crammed in between Jiya on one side and Garcia on the other, and found herself leaning more heavily into the latter. From the way he turned his head and smirked at her, he knew it. She met that with an unapologetic wink of her own.

But soon enough there was the mission to focus on, and pulling the curtain back, she saw Adams peering out. He wouldn’t be among the brightest luminaries of the American presidency, in part because he’d tried to be beyond partisanship right when political parties were really beginning to get entrenched, but he’d been--would become--a brilliant statesman and diplomat. For a teenage boy, living in France with his father, and having adventures in Russia too, it must have helped shaped his imagination and curiosity.

“It’s harvest time here too, Mrs. Dana, just like in Massachusetts,” he said, peering back over his shoulder at her, boyishly eager to reach out to her, encourage her, after the loss of her husband. “See? The farmers are busy working in their fields.” He pointed towards the peasants out harvesting golden stalks of grain by hand with sickles and scythes. Not corn, that she knew for sure, but...wheat? She realized awkwardly how little she knew about something like agriculture by sight, given how much a part of life it was throughout so much of history.

“Not their fields. They’re serfs, John,” Garcia said bluntly, glancing across the carriage at the boy, and as clipped as his words were, she saw a glimmer of something both soft and sad in his eyes. He’d been a boy thrown in far beyond his depth too, hadn’t he? He’d suffered his own disillusionments.

Adams sat back down, awkwardly adjusting his stock at his neck. “I thought that serfdom died out centuries ago. That feudalism was, well, very long dead.”

“It did die out in the west,” she answered him. “Things move...on a different pace in Russia.”

“Such a life,” Adams said, shaking his head sadly. “No land of their own, no freedom to choose their life and profession, to live and marry whom they please. I suppose they’re like peasants of medieval times too and can be traded and gifted like livestock.”

“They’re owned by various nobles, yes. Or the state, or the church.” And while some sitting the Russian throne with an increasingly Western outlook would try to chip away at the monolith--Peter III, Catherine, Alexander I--serfdom wouldn’t die out in Russia fully until 1861 under Alexander II. It seemed strange to her that it died around the time slavery finally gasped its last in America. Though much like slavery, ending it in law didn’t exactly end the inequality in practice, which led directly to the Russian Revolution. 

Something flared to life in Dana’s eyes at that. “We’re hardly of a superior position to judge,” she said. “Given that many throughout the colonies hold people in bondage too.” She looked out the window at the agricultural laborers for another moment, then closed the curtain carefully. “We only try to better justify it by saying that they’re African, heathen, primitive, and so deserving of the yoke and the lash. An American who holds a slave should be considered no better than these Slavic nobles, much as they claim the honor. Perhaps it’s even worse that we do so, for all our pretense to a more enlightened culture.”

Lucy hoped her answering smile at that was taken as the admiration it was, rather than dismissive condescension. Elizabeth Ellery Dana was another woman who’d disappeared into the history books--even her husband hadn’t been mentioned that much among much more famous figures of the Revolution. But here she was, vivid and fierce, ready to go to the court of a foreign ruler and take her husband’s place to try to help the American war effort, and America’s future with Russia to boot. Garcia leaned down and murmured, obviously amused, “She remind you of Abiah Franklin a bit?”

She did. Strong, plain-spoken unapologetic Massachusetts stock, like Franklin had been, like Dana’s friend Abigail Adams. “How many guns did you have Salem, anyway?” Once he started firing, he’d been like a one-man arsenal, and she knew full well from experience now exactly how fiddly and time consuming reloading muzzleloaders was, so he’d obviously had numerous guns on hand. She asked it in her hesitant few months of study of Croatian, because she couldn’t use French around Adams, and they had no other language in common aside from English. And as much as they knew about the mission and the Lifeboat, talking about other missions in front of Adams and Dana felt like a bad idea. It was “need to know”, but no need to completely open the floodgates. 

He didn’t wince or correct whatever horror she’d made of vocabulary and grammar, and spoke slowly and simply enough for her to largely follow. “Enough to do the work,” he said flippantly. “The Popes were very helpful in saying who else would have them.”

“You two want to quit flirting?” Wyatt said grumpily, sitting alongside Adams, still leaning over him to peer out the window.

“Oh, darling, I always forget how jealous you get when I pay attention to other people,” Garcia shot back at him, staring directly at him with an unapologetic expression of _Yes, I will embarrass you until you learn._

Adams’ jaw dropped, looking at Garcia, Lucy, and Wyatt in something like panicked confusion. Enlightened as they might be on some things, homosexuality wasn’t one of them. Especially Massachusetts with its still heavy Puritan streak. “He’s not being serious,” she told him, giving Garcia a look of her own. What would fly in 2018 wouldn’t pass muster in the past sometimes. Fast and loose as he could play with history at points, he could forget that.

Closing his mouth, Adams nodded, leaning back against the blue velvet upholstery of the coach. With Garcia’s help for the Russian, she’d hired the best-looking carriage possible. It wouldn’t do to arrive at Tsarskoye Selo looking less than stylish. Their clothes were already going to be enough of a liability, but they could at least claim a murder and an emergency on that. Chasing Reznikov meant they’d had to clip out some of the niceties, and given the man had a head start with their detour to Cambridge, time was of the essence. As was, Jiya had said the Mothership landed in St. Petersburg six hours ago. More and more lately, she wanted to kick the damn Lifeboat and curse its inability to get better precision on the chrono-nav. They’d debated whether they could go to St. Petersburg the night before, but then Jiya launched into a long stream of consciousness about how leapfrogging the timeline like that so closely, even if not touching it directly, might screw things up.

Garcia had grimly agreed with that back in Alūksne. “I doubled back to 1780.” Jiya shot him a _no duh, we tracked you_ look. Lucy carefully avoided looking at him on that, because far as they’d come since then, yes, it wasn’t one of their better moments. “Landed a few hours before we were there before. The mission went sideways, but something about the whole thing felt--off. Wrong.” He shook his head. “Like being in one of those funhouses with mirrors on every side, infinite echoes to the point something right in front of you felt like looking at a mirage. I obviously stepped too close to a timepoint I’d already established, and it was like trying to run upstream. The timestream resisted changing ten times as hard.” He gave an awkward shrug. “That’s something the Lifeline will fix, I guess.”

Arriving at Peterhof, she’d advised them to seek out Catherine’s foreign minister, Ivan Osterman, and luckily, after some pleading, bribes, and the like, they found him in his office, apparently in a good mood finishing up his lunch break. The fact that the court spoke French helped infinitely here, since she and Jiya, and Adams for that matter, could understand what was being said. Though as their only adult male French speaker, she let Garcia take the lead initially. “I am addressing Foreign Minister Osterman?” he said, giving the man a elegant, flourishing bow. She tried to not smile at it.

“You do,” Osterman said, looking at them. “Who are you?” She noted wryly that he only asked who Garcia was, and maybe Wyatt. The rest of them didn’t count.

“I have the honor to be Colonel Grigorije Filipović.”

Osterman looked him over, clearly seeing the Slavic cheekbones, the almond-shaped eyes. “And you are Colonel of what?”

“Colonel of cabbage and potatoes, mostly, these days.” He smiled cheerfully. “I’m Croat-born, sir. From Split. The Venetians may control my home on paper, but they were too busy sitting on their asses twenty years ago during the war, so I enlisted in Maria Theresa’s forces as a hussar.”

Osterman perked up at that, something in his expression and carriage easing. “Cavalryman, eh?”

“Wounded at Maxen, serving under Colonel Daun. Though going home to recuperate for a few months meant I met my Lucija, my Lucy--” He gestured to her. “Her father Henri was a scholar from Paris, in the East to study the sites of antiquity.” 

Easier to make her French than American, true. But something within her breathed a sigh of relief that he’d called Henry her father, not Benjamin, and that he understood her that well to know the difference. Though even when they’d met, hadn’t he said, _I know your father’s dead_ , even when he’d known about Benjamin? Even then, not really knowing her, he’d known who mattered to her. Watching Osterman’s face, she saw the openness there, the wariness gone like storm clouds dissipated by the sun. “And so what brings you to St. Petersburg, Colonel?”

“We were in France to see Lucy’s brother.” She couldn’t help but be grateful he hadn’t gone for a sister. Amy was gone, even though the emptiness remained still, and Ellie held some promise. She hadn’t been Rittenhouse, she’d in fact been approached by Ethan to help gather information, and she’d helped him compile and sort, but she’d mostly wanted to get the hell away from Rittenhouse and live her life. Surprisingly enough, Benjamin had let her go her own way. Maybe because he had a bigger prize on the line, or so he thought: Lucy herself. She hoped maybe she and her half-sister could be friends, but it would never be like having Amy back. It would be different, no matter what. 

She piped up, stepping forward. “We were traveling with our friends,” a gesture to Jiya and Wyatt, “through the Latvian borderlands to see other old friends of my Grégory. We found the American colonies had sent an ambassador to Her Imperial Majesty Catherine’s court. He had been murdered near Marienburg,” the historical name for Alūksne, “while trying to arrange a change of carriage, while his wife, children, and secretary,” she nodded towards Dana, the kids, and Adams, “were waiting inside. My dear husband, and our friend,” she nodded to Wyatt, “offered the man’s family his protection for the rest of their journey here.” She looked at Osterman, his powdered and curled wig slightly askew. “We believe he was assassinated. Have you had a man come here claiming to be that ambassador?”

Osterman said something under his breath that she expected was a Russian curse. “Yes, a man named Francis Dana came here first thing this morning. He has an audience with the Empress late this afternoon.” Shit. So Reznikov had gotten even further than Francis Dana, with his hands tied by conflicting demands, waiting in St. Petersburg for his introduction to Catherine. 

Adams spoke up, his French a little simple and hurried, almost shaking with anger. “He is _no_ Francis Dana. Francis Dana was a friend to my father, and the bastard...” He switched to English, looking at her helplessly. “Lucy, how do you say ‘killed’ in French?” She was vaguely impressed he’d learned to say “bastard”.

“The man claiming to be Francis Dana killed him,” she supplied to Osterman, emphasizing the word ”killed” and glancing at John so that he understood that was the word he wanted to learn. “He probably gave you forged papers also.”

Osterman shook his head, confused. “I admitted him to the _tsaritsa’s_ presence only as a private citizen, out of respect for his long journey here. How can there be an ambassador from a country that doesn’t even exist? The American colonies aren’t recognized as a sovereign nation yet, despite that declaration of theirs. Until they and Britain resolve the matter--” He gave a helpless shrug.

“Well, they sent someone, and he’s dead. The one claiming to be him is probably a British spy,” Garcia said. “In any case, the man murdered this poor woman’s husband, and left two children fatherless. Certainly the Empress couldn’t stand for that, now could she?”

The muttered Russian oath came again, and Osterman rubbed his ink-stained fingers together anxiously, clearly thinking. “The man is due to be presented in less than two hours. He’s already in the throne room right now, waiting with the others with business for the Empress today. No way now to quietly waylay and arrest him. There will be a scene.” He groaned, head in his hands for a moment.

“Could be fun,” Garcia said cheerfully, _sotto voce_. She resisted the urge to roll her eyes and elbow him in the ribs. Keeping to an undertone, he asked her, “Lucy, you sure he’s not there to kill Catherine?” 

“I can’t see the benefit.” George III might be another matter. “But trying to influence Russian foreign policy with the US with a small nudge like this, right when it begins…”

Osterman looked them up and down, dressed in ordinary clothing stolen from that Latvian laundry, and a bit dusty from the road besides. “You’re also in no way dressed for a court appearance.”

“Can you get us ready for that in time?” she asked, giving him her most pleading expression. “Please? If not for diplomacy with a nation that doesn’t exist yet by treaty, then in the interest of justice.” Or if nothing else, to keep his job when Catherine found out what had happened.

He managed it in an hour, impressively enough, though she had no idea how much clout he’d had to exercise to make it happen. Stuffed into a cherry pink brocade gown with deep red trim and embroidery, the maid clucked that there was no time for an elaborate hairstyle. She tied her hair back with the deep red ribbon from the peddler in Cambridge that she’d tucked into her pocket. “It’ll do,” she said in French, not sure the maid understood it, but hoping her smile did the trick. “ _Spasibo_.”

As the carriage rolled up, the soaring robin’s egg blue edifice of Tsarskoye Selo, the summer residence of the Russian nobility, took her breath away, and it had nothing to do with the tight-cinched stays. “Did you ever think you’d see a thing like this?” she asked Jiya softly.

Jiya shook her head, adjusting her navy blue skirts as she descended from the carriage. “Beats a jail cell in New York City, I’ll say that.” She nodded to herself and then Wyatt. “What’s our story?” Speaking English, quietly, would probably be fairly safe so long as they didn’t make a big deal of it.

“You can at least speak French, so that’s good.”

“I guess I can’t be American,” Wyatt said.

“You could. If you’re claiming to be a soldier for hire, who maybe came to Europe after the Seven Years’ War. Either that, or you’re Austrian, which is how you and Garcia met, you’re old Army buddies, but also why you only speak German.”

“Wilhelm Lohmann it is.” 

“Jiya--”

“Turkish?”

“Russia’s at war with the Ottoman Empire, so not a good idea.”

“Greek, maybe?” she said next, furrowing her brow. “And we’re friends through your dad the antiquities scholar.”

That made sense. “Good.”

“Well,” Wyatt said, “since I don’t speak the language, guess I’m mostly just going to keep quiet and nod.”

“It’s a really good look on you,” Garcia told him with a smirk.

Wyatt looked ready to explode for about a half second, but gave a half-hearted laugh. She’d give him credit for realizing he was out of his depth here, but she had to sympathize with the frustration of not knowing what was going on or being talked about. “Great. Let’s get this done.”

Surely she was allowed to gawk a bit, so she let herself do it, the foreigner impressed. But not too impressed, as a Frenchwoman--she’d have seen Versailles in its glory day, rather than as part of a study abroad her junior year. Garcia, wearing crimson brocade and a lace jabot without a flicker of unease at the peacock-flashy fashions of an 18th century gentleman, also strode through the gates and the guards as if unimpressed. Though she noticed he’d kept wearing his boots rather than heeled shoes. Even he had his limits, especially for practicality when a fight might be happening.

Osterman ushered them into the palace, each room more breathtaking than the last. Walking through the famous Amber Room, she couldn’t help but turn around a few times to drink it all in, dazzled by the hand-carved panels of Baltic amber in hundreds of shades, all backed with mirrors and gold leaf, lit by candlelight that made the amber glow. The installation covered the entire room. “The Nazis steal all of this,” she told Garcia, who’d slowed to her pace, keeping to her side. “Tried to claim it was German anyway, since part of it was Friedrich Wilhelm I’s gift to Peter the Great. Never seen again. It likely got destroyed by firebombs in Königsberg.” It had been known as the Eighth Wonder of the World, a peerless work of art and craftsmanship. They’d made a reconstructed version finished in 2007, but knowing something so beautiful and historical was lost, probably destroyed by firebombs in Königsberg late in World War Two, still hurt. There had been so many more objectively horrifying losses in that war. But seeing something like this, something so extraordinary made by human hands and imagination, all the knowledge and pride and time and effort that had made it possible, touched something in the soul, and to believe it was gone forever felt like a light had gone out all the same. 

He reached out and squeezed her hand briefly, didn’t tell her that she needed to focus on what was important--i.e., Rittenhouse--and was being ridiculous to mourn something like this. “How do you want to handle this?” she asked him. He’d said he’d figure out how to deal with Reznikov.

“Direct. If we play nice, he maybe worms his way out. Follow my lead.” Striding into the throne room of Tsarskoye Selo, light and airy with tall arched windows lining the walls and casting the late afternoon sunlight on the floor inlaid with elaborate wooden designs, Osterman led the way.

“Just don’t pull out a pistol and shoot him right there.” 

“Nah, Russians like some style with their dramatics,” he quipped, brushing past Osterman and heading into the alleyway between the crowd of people, towards the throne where the empress sat. Osterman let out a squawk of horror and grabbed at his sleeve, but missed, and she could practically feel the man hoping his career, and possibly his life, weren’t going down the drain by the second. 

Pausing at the foot of the steps to the throne, Garcia bowed his head, clasping his hands in front of him for a moment, looking up at the woman on the throne, the black double-headed Russian eagle behind her on the wall. Speaking in French, he pitched his voice to carry throughout the throne room. “Gracious lady, _matushka_ , Empress and autocrat of all the Russias, I come here for justice. For a woman whose husband was slain, for two children who now stand fatherless, for a boy whose mentor protected his life at the cost of his own. A man who, it seems has come here, lying to you, intending to charm his way into your presence and your court.” His tone fierce, unyielding as stone, daring to look up at her as he said it. 

_Oh, Goddammit, Garcia._ The moment hung there as heavy as lead, and her stomach turned to ice, anxiety brewing up into a boil as she waited for the possibility of Catherine to order him thrown out. But the woman on the throne looked at him and his boldness with interest, inclining her head slightly. “And who is is that you claim is an imposter?”

“A man calling himself ‘Francis Dana’, after he left the real one dead in a Latvian ditch.” She could only imagine he saw the irony in that, given he’d killed and impersonated Austin Roe himself. “These here,” he gestured behind him towards Dana and Adams, “are the man’s family, and his protege. My wife, my friends, and I have escorted them from the Latvian wilderness where the murder happened, knowing what the assassin’s purpose must be.” Lucy dared to step forward behind him, approaching Catherine, hearing the footfalls behind her, sensing the rest of them followed her too.

Catherine scanned the group before her, dark blue eyes keen and intelligent. “What is the purpose of your being here?” she asked Dana.

She shook her head, saying in English, cheeks tinged pink with embarrassment but spine utterly spear-straight all the same, “I’m sorry, but I don’t speak French.”

Adams stepped forward. “I’ll interpret for her. Mr. Dana was sent by the United States of America to be an ambassador to your great nation, Your Imperial Majesty.”

Catherine shook her head, though a spark of amusement was in her eyes. “We don’t recognize any such nation as ‘America’, young man. That has been made very clear these last few years.”

Lucy heard Adams translating quietly to Dana. She raised her eyes to meet Catherine’s, a republican unapologetically polite but not overly deferential towards the most powerful woman currently in the world. “Nevertheless, here we are. I am without my husband, who was murdered by who I presume was a British agent seeking to take his place. I grieve him. But you are one who knows what it is to carry on alone as a widow, are you not?”

A slow smile appeared for a moment on Catherine’s face. “So I am.” Lucy noticed she used the singular, not the majestic royal plural at that, speaking to Dana for a moment woman-to-woman. 

“Then here I stand, on behalf of the American people. If nothing else, by your leave, John, my children, and I shall remain here in St. Petersburg as seekers of knowledge, to learn from you, your nation, and your people, until such point as the quarrel between America and Britain is resolved.”

“Osterman,” Catherine called. “Where is the man you had admitted to Our presence as this ‘Francis Dana’?” 

“Here he is,” Osterman said, pointing out Reznikov. Mid-twenties, dark hair, just like Jessica had messaged. Stepping out from the crowd, he bowed low. “Your Imperial Majesty, he presented correct identification papers, and I did tell him that no diplomatic introduction was possible, but he begged to meet your gracious personage as a private citizen.”

Reznikov smiled, obviously ready to try to lie or charm his way out of it. For a moment she almost felt sorry for him, naively not realizing he was out of his depth. “Your Imperial Majesty, if this is a joke from them, I assure you that it’s a very bad one.”

Garcia stepped in. “Someone give me a sword. I’ll fight this mangy bastard face to face, which is more of a chance than he gave the man he shot down in cold blood.” She stared at him, about ready to protest that he couldn’t, what kind of idiot was he to try to challenge someone to a duel? 

She eyed Reznikov, feeling sick. He was over six feet tall himself, so he’d have almost the same reach, and almost twenty years younger, and without a still-healing right shoulder. _Garcia, what are you doing?_ Dueling? He could get hurt. He could die. The thought made her want to start panicking. 

But staring at Garcia, cold and irate, Reznikov blanched. “Who are you,” he asked, “to try to interfere in this matter?” But she could see he was struggling, spiraling.

Snapping at Reznikov, he switched to another language, one she didn’t know. “Wyatt?” she asked, hearing the cadence of what sounded Middle Eastern. 

Wyatt sighed. “It’s Farsi. Reznikov was probably in the Middle East when he served, but I’m not sure, looking at him, that he knows what Garcia’s saying. ‘I’m the man whose wife and daughter you fanatics murdered, you goat-fucker, so fight me or I kill you where you stand.’ Seriously, does his drama dial ever go below eleven? Dude steals the Mothership and--” 

“Pot, kettle,” Jiya said dryly.

“Point taken.”

Catherine raised her hand and her voice, not shouting, but with enough authority so that the entire room fell silent. “There will be no duel. This man,” she gestured to Reznikov with one heavily ringed hand, “will be taken to the Fortress as a murderer and an apparent spy, and we _will_ find out,” her eyes piercing Reznikov like a sheaf of arrows, “what it is that he knows.”

 _Oh, hell._ On the one hand, great, Catherine believed them. But this was going sideways in a hurry. She almost hoped he had his cyanide pill on hand, because she wasn’t thrilled at the idea of him being tortured, plus if he spilled everything about Rittenhouse and the Mothership and all of it, if Catherine’s prison staff didn’t dismiss it as the ravings of a broken man.

Reznikov grinned at them, a cocky boyish grin. “Well, guess the mission’s screwed. I didn’t really want to sleep with her anyway,” he said in English. “Don’t think you’ve won the war, though.” She saw him bite down deliberately. He must have sneaked his pill into his mouth. Lucy looked away, not needing to see it again, but the gasps and cries from the crowd, the thump as Reznikov hit the floor, told her all she needed to know.

“Asshole,” Jiya muttered, lowly but loud enough that Lucy heard it.

She turned and looked at Catherine, as boldly as Garcia and Dana had done it. “It seems the spy took his own life rather than answer for his crimes. That seems proof enough, doesn’t it?”

Catherine looked her up and down. “And who are you, my dear? It seems introductions have been missed.” She still carried a trace of her German accent, this woman who’d been born princess of a tiny backwater German principality. She’d come here as a teenage bride, transformed herself completely since then, seized the throne for herself against a weak husband not suited to rule. _Princess Lucy_ , Emma’s voice sneered in her head. _Princess of nothing._

Lucy looked at Catherine, half-rising from her throne, ignoring Reznikov as if he were yesterday’s trash to be taken out. Past fifty, grey haired and plump, her gravitas and power were undeniable. _Little Frederika Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst was princess of nothing too, and look at her now._ “I am Lucy Filipović, Your Imperial Majesty.”

“Your father’s name?”

She understood what was being asked, the importance of patronymics to a Russian. “Henri.” To hell with Benjamin. To hell with Carol too, for that matter, because even the best version of her who’d seemingly walked away from Rittenhouse had still taken her toll on Lucy. Henry, the parent who’d been the one who cared for her, deserved that claim. Especially since he must have known she wasn’t his by blood, and it had made no difference in how he loved her.

“Well, you and your husband--and what are you, a Serb? Transylvanian? You have the look of the southern Slav about you.”

“Croatian. Here in Russia I would be called Grigori Ilyich.” Lucy tried to not glance apologetically over her shoulder as Catherine pretty much ignored Wyatt and Jiya, though the fact that they hung back didn’t help either. “May I present our friends, Wilhelm Lohmann and Iona Maris.”

“A Prussian--”

“Willi is an Austrian,” Lucy corrected her carefully. “He fought alongside my husband at,” which battle had he said? “Maxen.”

“And a Greek, and then these Americans? Quite the assemblage.”

“We travel and meet many people. Scholars and soldiers, Your Imperial Majesty,” Garcia said with a nonchalant smile.

Catherine laughed. “And are you the scholar or the soldier, Lyusya Genrievna?” 

“She’s both,” Garcia replied, utterly serious. He looked at Catherine and gave her another smile. “After all, gracious lady, are you not both the soldier and the scholar yourself?” He added something in Russian.

Catherine gave a different laugh, a low chuckle, eyeing him with more interest. “You seem to have presented Our court quite the puzzle, but you’ve also done a noble deed in protecting these travelers.” She gave another of those slow smiles. “And allowed Minister Osterman to correct what seems to be a mistake before it became a serious incident. So tonight you will be guests of the Imperial Court. We insist. Then tomorrow you may resume your journey.”

She’d debated claiming they were in Latvia to buy a breeding ram, or something like that, but had decided not to do it. Sometimes giving too much detail just looked more suspicious. And with any luck, Catherine would have gifted them one, and they’d have had to deal with finding someone near St. Petersburg to gift a sheep without causing an actual diplomatic incident from offering imperial offense, or else dragging it back with them in the Lifeboat. _Hey Jiya, what’s the effect of time travel on non-human organisms? Wanna find out?_ Much as she’d like to just get back to the Lifeboat with the job done, she really was exhausted from three Lifeboat jumps, and being up for what she estimated was at least thirty hours straight by now. Plus they’d have to see if Dana and Adams would be OK once they left. Anyway, it was better than sleeping in the woods like they had in 1754. “A thousand thanks, Your Imperial Majesty. We’re all weary from the road and graciously accept your generous offer.”

~~~~~~~~~~

He was already exhausted, and staying in Tsarskoye Selo meant even more exhaustion in some ways. Because they had to stay on mission mentally, in character, careful of what they said and did until the point the Lifeboat hatch closed and the jump button got pressed. But he could admit that well over twenty four hours without sleep, the mental fatigue of the mission, and then the effort of things like gravedigging and hauling the carriage off the road, had taken their toll. He wasn’t sure any of them could have stayed awake for the ride back to Ropsha, and even Jiya, with the most practice, might have been too tired to make the calculation to get back home. There was a good suggestion for Connor--a simple autopilot “return” button. Seriously, a GPS had a “home” setting, so why not the Lifeboat? Even the Mothership hadn’t had that advantage. He’d seen all the pilots, Anthony, Emma, Rufus, and Jiya, tired at the end of a mission, fumbling with the controls and the numbers.

Catherine provided them a small dinner together, an intimate room barely big enough for the six of them. The Dana children were fed separately in their mother’s room. That seemed a kindness because it meant if there was some kind of important gathering going on, they didn’t have to be a part of it. It also meant it put them squarely lower in the guest hierarchy, but that didn’t bother him either. He didn’t have the patience or energy for anything like an interminable state dinner.

They stuck to English, their common tongue, though conversation stayed careful. It wouldn’t do to say too much in front of Eliza Dana and John Quincy Adams to begin. After that, even if it had been just the four of them, he wasn’t stupid enough to not know that palace servants and spies were probably listening in to their every word, and some of them probably spoke other languages, including the possibility of English.

The food was rich, almost too rich, so he found himself sticking to black bread and meat and the like, rather than absurd creations like some kind of mousse shaped like a sturgeon with cucumber slices for scales. “What will you do?” Lucy asked Dana.

“As I told the Empress, stay here until either the Continental Congress recalls me, sends someone else, or the war is over.” She’d taken this with admirable aplomb. Widowed less than a day, uprooted from her home and sent to a foreign country with a mission, told about something crazy like time travel, and she sat there, strong as steel. Twenty-four hours after Lorena and Iris were killed, he’d been somewhere in West Virginia, still mostly in shock. She smiled, but he could see the shadow of sadness in it. “It seems I have some purpose here.”

“I’ll teach you French, Mrs. Dana,” Adams said, looking at her with anxious concern. “We’ll both learn Russian, I suppose. So we’ll manage.”

Now her smile took on a brighter edge. “You’re a good lad, John. I’m sorry for your mother’s sake, for I know how Abigail misses you. But I’m glad to have you with me for this journey.”

“America will win the war, you know,” Wyatt told them, and he saw the glimmer of sympathy in his eyes. “It’s only a matter of time now. I hope that helps make it all worth it.”

“It never balances, because they’re still gone,” he disagreed. Winning the war was cold comfort. Iris was gone forever, as was the Lorena he had loved. The satisfaction of taking down Rittenhouse wouldn’t make up for that. But at least destroying Rittenhouse meant making the world better, preventing other people from suffering like that at their hands. It was the best outcome, even if the pain lingered. To do otherwise, to see Rittenhouse win, would truly mean all the loss and suffering had been for nothing. “But to win for what they loved still lessens the pain.”

“You’ve lost someone,” Dana said, tone suddenly quiet, looking at him across the candlelight with a look of sorrowful understanding.

He found himself busily staring at his half-full wine glass, wishing like hell it was full again. “My wife and daughter were killed years ago by--those we spoke of earlier.” He wouldn’t say it aloud with people listening. 

She nodded at that. “I will pray for them, then, as I’ll pray for Francis.” 

“Thank you.” The words came out harder than he’d have liked. Lorena would have liked that. And here was a woman just widowed herself, thinking of other people. Yeah, he had to be confident she’d be strong enough to survive this, and anything else life threw at her. Though he looked at Lucy, needing her to know his thoughts weren’t dwelling there, that his heart wasn’t still buried in a Baltimore graveyard. Even if those graves didn’t exist anymore, they had existed, and he thanked God for them, would always love them. But there was more now than hurtful vengeance. “It’s obvious you loved him deeply. You don’t recover easily from that kind of loss, but I hope that you do, in time. I’m lucky to have found someone who, even after grief made me into something pretty terrible, still saw something worthwhile in me.”

Lucy looked at him, eyes wide and startled, and he saw the deepening color in her cheeks. He tried to fight the urge to fidget himself, feeling strangely exposed to say something so casually in front of Jiya and Wyatt. But they’d better get used to it. Besides, he was tired of them probably assuming he didn’t know how little he deserved her, and that Lucy deciding he was worth a chance didn’t wipe his slate clean. He knew. He’d always know, and always strive to be the man worthy of her. Better to serve them notice that he was aware of what a screw-up he’d been, and he’d keep trying. 

He’d never been a particularly publicly demonstrative man in relationships, true, because the best of it had been only for the one he loved. But she also deserved to hear it said frankly in front of others what kind of woman she was. Given how lousy her own mother had been to her, tearing her down, trying to groom her for--what? Rittenhouse? Maybe not, given she hadn’t told Lucy until well past thirty, and he had to think Lucy was right that before the _Hindenburg_ , that Carol would have gone to her grave without telling her daughter about her fucked-up legacy. But even that “best” Carol Preston had been critical, abusive, unable to consider her daughter as anything but an extension of herself and her prestige, and God forbid that Lucy should be an inferior echo and make Carol look bad. 

Remarkable how much he hated a woman he’d never even met, given he’d missed the St. Mihiel mission, and then he’d had to go chase Emma and Jessica while Carol lay dying in the photography studio. But it was easy for him to hate Carol for hurting Lucy, just the same as he suspected it was far easier for Lucy to hate his own father, whereas for him, it was far more complicated. Though at least drunk and bitter bastard that Asher Flynn could be, he wasn’t part of an elitist cult. He had to wonder what her father Henry had been doing that he hadn’t stopped Carol from the abuse. Though maybe he had, in the same way that Maria Flynn tried to protect him when she could. He couldn’t know, and he didn’t want to ask and force her to dig up the pain. If she wanted to talk about it someday, that was another thing. 

But she’d heard so often from Carol she wasn’t pretty enough, wasn’t clever enough, wasn’t good enough. She should hear as often as she could how extraordinary she truly was. He met her eyes, trying to tell her, _You’re worth all that, and more._

She didn’t look away.

They hadn’t thought their usual claim of being a married couple through all that well, clearly, because the other shoe dropped when the servants showed them to their room for the night. Room, singular. Bed, singular. They’d shared the couch back in Gettysburg, true, and that had been an unexpected sweetness. But things had moved further down the road than that, and something in him simultaneously flared to life with eagerness and fear.

He had to admit he was grateful that a very efficient royal maid named Varvara, all fox-red hair and freckles in a way that reminded him momentarily of Emma, handled getting Lucy’s dress and stays undone. Because if she’d asked him to do it, he would have been done for. Assuming he could keep his hands steady enough to undo the buttons. As was, dealing with his own clothes, hearing the rustle of fabric behind the screen, seeing pieces of clothing draped over the top edge and very vividly imagining each layer coming off, he closed his eyes, steadying himself.

It was October back home. Four years since he’d touched anyone like that, or been touched. For so long after that, three years, there had been virtually nothing. He’d buried all of that beneath the rage and determination, and the depression. Besides, he wasn’t a man who could be haunted by desire for someone he didn’t care about, and he couldn’t love or be loved, so whatever libido he’d had faded away anyway. There was only the mission, not the man. Three years, and a few dreams from memories of Lorena, sweet and sensual dreams that had him waking with an ache in both body and soul. That was all. 

Lucy had changed all that. Not the warrior-angel from Brazil. She was as untouchable as he’d been. What love--if it had been love--he had for her was more of an awe and the profound need for partnership from an idolized figure. It would have felt almost profane to desire her. This Lucy, coming out from behind the screen in her shift, grumbling about her too-tight stays, she was different. She awoke his soul again, his sense of self. Rediscovering parts of the man he’d been, finding parts of the man he wanted to be, he’d become something new. Things came back, the things the machine on a mission of murder had signed away as having no right to them anymore: laughter, friendship, love. Desire.

He’d come back to life, and the force of that sometimes felt like it might drive him to his knees, make him break down, unbearable as it was to feel everything both good and bad that he’d pushed away so he could survive and endure. He hadn’t wanted for so long, hadn’t been wanted. He’d maybe been desired by Emma if only as part of her mission plan, and he’d seen others eyeing him appreciatively during his fugitive years. He’d been needed by Lucy herself, early on, and then by the rest of the team. But nobody had looked at him and wanted him. She’d seen something worth saving in him, and then something worth loving. He’d owed a debt to the woman who handed him the journal for keeping him alive and turning him towards a fierce sense of purpose. But how much more did he owe to this woman who’d given him hope of having a life worth living, challenged him to find the best in himself again, who wouldn’t let him go to hell with blood on his hands and excuses on his lips? Who could look at him, so flawed and broken, and still hold him close and say _Yes, you’re the one I love_? 

“She likes you,” Lucy said, brushing out her hair, the soft waves of it falling over her pale shoulders, left half-bare in the loose neckline of her shift. The gleam of it in the candlelight made him think of moonlight glinting off dark night waters, and God, if they stayed in Russia much longer he was going to turn into an absolute maudlin poet as well as the most awkward emotional idiot. "Catherine, I mean. She was very amused." Presumably unlike the _not amused_ Victoria. 

He managed to get his tongue unstuck, carefully hanging his jacket and waistcoat over the dressing screen. “I remember reading she has something of a thing for tall good-looking Slavic men.”

“She has a type, yes,” he said dryly. “Sergei Saltykov, Grigori Orlov, Stanislaw Poniatowsky, Grigori Potemkin…I’m pretty sure that was her current Favorite, Alexander Lanskoy, in the pale green coat.”

He’d missed the man, being too busy dealing with Reznikov, but she’d mentioned Catherine was a bit of a cougar. He couldn’t resist making a joke. “A fifty-plus woman being in charge and still unapologetically enjoying a good sex life? Quite the role model.”

“Think she was trying to add Grigorije Filipović as her next Favorite?” she asked, turning to him with a quirk at the corner of her mouth. He knew she was only teasing, but still, he’d been well aware the frankly appraising way the empress now looked at him. Well, turnabout was fair play. He had to imagine he now felt what pretty much every woman did every day. 

He snorted in amusement. “She can look, but no. I’m off-limits.”

“True. I was only joking. She never did go for a married man. Though you’d actually deny the autocrat of the Russian Empire?”

 _I shot a president, what’s defying an empress?_ , he thought darkly. “Eh, we Southern Slavs have always had a weird love-hate relationship with Mother Russia. And I’ve heard I sometimes have a problem with authority.” He stepped closer to her. “Anyway– _draga_ , don’t you know I’d always hold the regard of my dearest wife above the favor of an empress?” He said it lightly, the expected silken-tongued words of an eighteenth-century gallant praising his lady, but it was no less than the truth for all that. “Besides, likely I’m too old and too messed up for her. She likes them young and impressionable and optimistic, right?” 

She looked at him, really looked at him with one of those glances that seemed to see right into his weary and patched-together soul, and not flinch. “Do you trust me, Garcia?”

“Of course.” How could he not?

“Do you trust my judgment?” she insisted.

“I mean, overall, yes, though we haven’t talked much the little things. No fault in your taste in music so far, though."

“Garcia.” She said it gently, but there was no denying it. The woman on that throne might command an empire, but Lucy Joan Preston could hold him with a single word, and he suspected both of them knew it. He nodded in reply, both to the challenge, and to her question. “Then stop it. Quit with the jokes about how terrible you think you are. I really don’t care what Wyatt thinks, or anyone else. The only person who gets to say whether you deserve to be with me is me, isn’t it? And if I say you’re good enough, if you can’t accept that, then what are we even doing?”

He stared at her, because once again, she’d managed to slip right under any guard he had and find him defenseless against her. “You made mistakes. You did terrible things. I think you know I’m not ignoring all that. But I think you’ve suffered more than enough, risked your life enough. You say we need to make time for each other, to plan for something beyond this war, then you challenged a man to a duel today, like you still don’t care whether you live or you die.”

“I didn’t think it would get to an actual duel. And I had to take a risk to overwhelm any protests and shut him down,” he said. “Challenging people to a duel these days is expected.” Walking in, “Law and Order” style, and demanding Reznikov get arrested, wouldn’t have worked. He was certain of that. “Lucy, I can’t hold back from everything, much as--God, do you know how much sometimes I want to say we’ve lost enough, paid enough, that we deserve to let someone else be the one to pick up the fight? Just take you and run off to Antarctica and hope Rittenhouse never finds us? But neither of us could hold our heads up after abandoning our friends like that.”

“I know.” The mask of the Filipovićs was long vanished. She slipped her arms around him, and he did it in turn, chin resting on the top of her head, holding her close. “Am I selfish to want that?” she murmured against his shoulder.

“No. No, _draga_. You’re not.” He’d tried to plan for a life beyond the fight once, looked forward so much to it. He’d wondered if God had punished him for that hubris by plunging him into an even more hellish and painful war than any he’d been in before. 

“I might die. I might have to watch you die. I know that. I’ve already watched so many people die in this war. And I know we both have been at a point where we thought there was nothing left, so we might as well die doing as much damage as possible. But it’s not like that, now?” He heard the quiver in her voice. _Am I enough? More than the war?_

“Of course it’s not. But there was nothing for me for that long. I’m...I forget that sometimes. And maybe I go too hard because I know nothing is safe. I want it to be done, I want it to be over. I want to live a life again that’s not about them, because they’ve owned my life for four years, Lucy. Seen them take so much from me, and you, and everything else. I’m...sometimes I’m so fucking _tired_. But that’s why there needs to be more than that, so we can get through this. And I can’t promise I won’t take risks, because you can’t either, but I swear to you that anything I do isn’t recklessness. It’s not because I don’t care about living. I do. How could I not, now?”

He pushed back from her just enough to look down at her upturned face in the glow of the single candle, dark eyes wide and luminous. Weighed it for a moment, and felt the rightness of it. He wouldn’t say no hesitation, no doubt, because he was only human, but only in himself, not in her, not in the way he felt.

She’d kissed him once in Zagreb, helping maintain their mission cover, and he knew he’d probably been awkward about it. Still trying to define his feelings for her, still trying to untangle it from his feelings for Lorena, and in no way ready for it. The first time someone touched him like that in years, and it was a casual lie from a woman he was growing to love. It was more pain than comfort at that point. 

But they’d claimed to be married often enough, and he had to wonder if some part of her, like him, didn’t wish that was real. They’d hidden behind enough half-truths, fake names. Time to be done with that and offer this honestly, earnestly, only as himself, Garcia Flynn who she somehow loved, and she was right, he needed to accept that as the gift it was rather than trying to deny it. So he leaned down to kiss her, one arm catching her around the waist, the other cupping the back of her head. God, she was so short that he almost wanted to joke about getting her a stepstool so he could kiss her properly without hunching over, and she’d probably want to kill him if he did, and of course he knew how to ruin a moment so he’d try not to with this one. 

It didn’t matter, because nothing was perfect but this was utterly right, the way she responded as naturally as if she’d dreamt this moment forever like it seemed he had, one arm around his neck to hold him there, fingers of her other hand sliding into his hair, answering him with her own kiss in return.

It was no fiercely passionate clash, something gentler and warmer and steady, hearthfire rather than wildfire. Felt like coming home, like letting out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding in for so long, a breath drawn in four years ago one dark Baltimore night as an unbearably raw scream that now had died down to the softest of sighs. _Volim te_ , and he’d have to tell her, actually say the words for her to hear, over and over, if he could ever stop kissing her again for a single second.

But finally he did, and the two of them stayed close in that embrace. Feeling the warmth of her skin and the softness of her body through the linen of her shift, the awareness of her and how little clothing they had between them a sudden heat in his blood. So close, almost too close, and now there was no backing away from her. Her mind must have gone there too, because her fingers caught in his shirt, as if ready to tug up, pull it off him. He knew the next steps of this dance well enough, even if it had been so long. His breath caught, wanting this and scared all at once. _Yes?_

She hesitated. “The last man I kissed,” she said, “I also slept with, right then. On a mission, no less, while Rittenhouse's agent was still running around loose. Because I wanted to feel something again. Because I thought it might be our only chance. Because I thought maybe he wouldn’t…if we didn't...”

For a split second he wanted to go snap Wyatt’s neck, but being honest, he couldn’t unpack Lucy’s fears from Wyatt’s actual idiocy. “I promise you,” he said, unable to keep from smiling at her anyway, “I will respect and love you in the morning. No matter what.” It came out with the solemnity of a vow, which it probably needed. He saw her swallow hard, glancing away for a moment. “I told you,” making sure there was no hint of glibness in his tone, “you’re worth it. You’re worth a lot more than your body, you know that?” Did she know that? He had the sense that most every relationship she'd had left her with the impression she didn't have much to offer aside from sex.

“You’re really not mad?”

He debated and discarded telling her, tongue-in-cheek, _It's been four years, I can definitely wait a while longer._ He settled for honesty instead. “Lucy, there’s a lot more to it than sex. One of the things I missed most,” something he couldn’t admit to her in that truck in Texas back when they weren’t talking about such intimate things, “is sleeping with someone I love. And I do mean sleeping. Holding them. Listening to their snores when it becomes familiar rather than annoying. Waking in the middle of the night and knowing you’re not alone. Even trying to not holler because she just put her freezing cold feet on your legs. People can have sex with anyone and it could be good, but to actually sleep with someone--that takes more.”

“I do have cold feet in winter.”

“Oh good, something to look forward to. Besides, honestly, I’m so tired I might fall asleep in the next five minutes. Which, if it happened in the middle of it, is not the way I want to start things with you.”

She gave him a shy grin. “Being honest, I might be right there with you.” She got a hand around the back of his neck, tugging him down gently but firmly. This time she kissed him, a brief kiss, but it held the promise of things to come. Making love, yes, but so much more, that future beyond the war and Rittenhouse that he sometimes dared to let himself dream about. It was a few sparse lines in a sketch at this point, but perhaps it was time to give more to that. Give both of them something more worth fighting for in the end. She let him go, tucked her hair back off her shoulders, heading for the absurdly big bed. “Let’s get some sleep, then.”


	24. 3x06: A Rumor In St. Petersburg (Lucy/Garcia, LaPlace, Louisiana, October 2018)

“Small room, friends right down the hall, communal eating, not many belongings. I missed out on the full experience, but this must be what it’s like to move in together during college,” Garcia joked, putting down his duffel bag on the desk. “Though that would need more Wal-Mart particle board furniture, wouldn’t it?”

She couldn’t help but smile wryly at that, shaking her head. “Most dorms wouldn’t have let us live together, you know. We’d have gotten an apartment off-campus.” She had been ready to do that with Jake sophomore year before he broke up with her right after finals, and then with Marissa, well, they wouldn’t have needed to worry about an apartment near campus when they were planning to go on the road as part of a band. She’d stayed in the dorms, gotten a job as a Resident Adviser her junior and senior years. The scare of the near-death experience had helped draw the line, and she spent the rest of her undergrad being very responsible Good Girl Lucy Preston. 

He looked around with a slow scanning turn of his head, and turned back to her, brow crinkled in mock consternation. “The new semester’s already started, so I suppose it’s it too late for that?”

She laughed, dropping her former satsuma citrus crate with her books in it on the desk beside his duffel bag. Wondered for a moment what her junior year self would make of her life now, given she’d assumed she knew how things would be, now that she’d left the wild fantasies behind. She’d get her MA, her PhD, get tenure somewhere, and live a life that was all about research and teaching and discovery, but an _orderly_ one. Hopefully meet someone, settle down, get a dog, maybe have a couple of kids.

Her twenty-two year old self, on the verge of walking across the stage and picking up that BA diploma, wouldn’t have been able to imagine this. Living near New Orleans with a time machine in the storage shed, brushing elbows with federal agents and tech moguls. Really experiencing history, saving it, shaping it, alive and both amazingly and terrifyingly real. Moving in, as it were, with a Croatian-American spy/freedom fighter/ex-terrorist who’d opposed her and then rescued her again and again, right now busily singing The Who’s “Baba O’Reilly” to himself and with the occasional drumming on the desktop to accompany it. 

_All mine, huh?_ But somehow the thought comforted her. For everything they’d been through, this felt good. Felt real. For so long, relationships were like wandering blind without a map. She fell into them, sometimes stumbled, awed and hopeful at meeting someone who’d made it clear that yes, they wanted her. It was one thing in college, but that continued probably long past when it should, into her thirties. Two years before Garcia stole the Mothership, right about when he’d been sent on the run, she’d been ending a year-long relationship with Jonas Lyger, the history department chair at Stanford. Screwing the boss--how droll. But she couldn’t say she’d done it to get ahead, because clearly if she had, that hadn’t worked given him turning down her tenure, criticizing her lectures, telling her that she wasn’t _serious_ enough. She’d done it because if only for a little while, he’d wanted her, made her feel special. Even Wyatt had been like that too, rushing to take what he offered before it could be withdrawn. She’d needed to be reassured by being wanted, lurching into relationships that made her feel good, if only for a little while.

Relationships happened to her; it wasn’t like she was in the driver’s seat. Maybe Garcia Flynn had happened too, at least to start. But slowly and carefully as they were building something between them, whatever happened, she would be able to say that she’d gone into this eyes wide open, that she’d wholeheartedly chosen it.

Seeing the top book on the crate, about the Founding Mothers, she couldn’t help but smile to see it. She’d checked as soon as they got back. Elizabeth Dana had earned her place in that pantheon. The mission in Russia still hadn’t produced formal results before the American Revolution ended, given Catherine couldn’t officially budge, but the two widows, the empress and the republican, had struck up a personal friendship. Eliza’s influence was subtle, but seemed clear to Lucy now: for an Enlightenment monarch, Catherine had given the Russian nobility their height of power during her reign. Now, she’d budged enough to give a few more rights to serfs, becoming in truth the more Western monarch she was usually thought to be, though it still took until 1850 for serfdom to die.

When America sent its first ambassador in 1785, William Short, twenty years before he’d been assigned there originally, he’d been enthusiastically received by Catherine. It set a precedent for Russo-American relations that stayed fairly warm, up until the 1917 Revolution. There were still-unproven rumors that at least one of the Romanov children had had escaped due to American friendships, and not all the bodies had been found, so it remained a lingering mystery.

As for Eliza, she had refused a noble title from her friend, stubbornly sticking to her American ideals. She’d learned French and Russian, was seen as a learned and refreshing presence at the court, won over a Russian count, Alexei Apraxin, for her second husband. She’d also managed to convince him to become a dyed-in-the-wool republican himself, give up his title, wealth, and estates to emigrate with her to America in 1784. Their grandson, Robert Frederick Apraxin, had become a fierce supporter of the common people, and an abolitionist to boot. John Quincy Adams still went on to have his brilliant career as a statesman. All in all, things had turned out pretty well for Eliza. 

_Guess Eliza found some charm in Slavic men herself, once she got a few truths through his stubborn skull._ She passed by him, brushing a hand down his arm as she did so, seeing him pause, look up, and smile. He gestured to the bed. “Apologies in advance. It’s a smaller bed than at Tsarskoye Selo. I’ll take more than my share.” 

After coming back from mission two days ago, and spending two nights with her sneaking down to his room and both of them sleeping uncomfortably in a very crowded single bed, they’d given up this morning and started to pack their things and move them to one of the double bedrooms, knowing full well everyone would notice the change. It seemed pointless to sleep apart, pretend something hadn’t shifted between them. Maybe they hadn’t had sex yet, and she could admit she was glad they’d both gracefully backed away from it in St. Petersburg. But at this point it wasn’t a matter of _if_ but _when_. 

She’d told him they would be fine, because she’d gotten a Depo shot months ago. It had been long enough after Jonas that for a while she hadn’t worried about the pill, and that bit her in the ass. Without being able to go to the pharmacy herself, she’d had to very awkwardly ask Denise for Plan B in a hurry after Wyatt. Good thing too, given the last thing they’d have needed right then was her and Jessica both pregnant with children fathered by Wyatt. God, they’d lived in enough of a soap opera already. She glumly could admit to herself now maybe another reason she hadn’t jumped Garcia that first night they’d talked, aside from the tipsiness and the exhaustion and the ethical hesitation, was not wanting to go to Denise _again_. She hadn’t really seriously dated in high school, and none of them had come close to sleeping with her, so having to get “Mom” to get her birth control had been a new and incredibly awkward experience. 

After she and Garcia talked on the battlefield at Gettysburg, when the notion of them having sex someday became an actual vague possibility rather than just an absurd unlikelihood, she’d gone to the local clinic, gotten the shot, gotten tested too just in case Wyatt somehow had something she didn’t know about. She didn’t know Garcia’s feelings on having kids. It was a conversation she suspected was still somewhere down the road, because Iris had to still be a deep wound. But she could say with confidence that _not now_ was the only possible answer for both of them at this point, and she’d taken care of that. He’d nodded, acknowledged it with a look of gratitude, and said nothing more. 

Though the awareness of Wyatt, Connor, and Jiya down the hall, and the memory of Wyatt and Jessica’s loud and enthusiastic evening performances, made her self-conscious. Aside from the awkwardness, she’d felt so small and alone hearing the laughter, the sighs, the moans, knowing that she’d sleep alone again. She could maybe do it to Wyatt--it seemed only fair that he get a taste of his own medicine--but she couldn’t do that to Jiya, bereft of Rufus as she was. Besides, maybe it was selfish, but she didn’t want to keep it down. Not at first, anyway. Though given they were just now declaring intent to share a room, she wasn’t up to approaching Denise about getting a hotel for a night or two. It wasn’t an issue yet anyway. When that point arrived, when they both were ready, they’d figure it out. Until then, it wasn’t like there wasn’t plenty to enjoy about the situation as was.

She shrugged, telling him with a flippant chuckle, “Well, I hog the covers.” 

“You also have a cute snore.”

“Wish I could say the same.”

“Sorry,” he answered with a sheepish grin. “Though it’s better in a bigger bed--”

She couldn’t resist. “That’s what she said?”

He let out an actual snorting cackle of laughter at that, covering his face for a moment, shoulders shaking with aftershock chuckles. “Being serious, I’ve been told I snore a lot less when I’m not sleeping folded up like some kind of demented origami.”

“Snorigami.”

He stared at her. “Oh no. No, no, no,” and the laugh returned, as he caught her around the waist, dragging her down onto the bed, springs squealing in protest as their combined weight hit. “Isn’t it in the Constitution that a pun that bad demands a kiss to make up for the injury?” 

She pushed up to her elbow, leaning over him. “I’m pretty sure it’s not.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Did you check it lately? We’ve changed a _lot_ of things, you never know.” Half-sitting up beneath her, he stretched an arm out towards the desk, reach absurdly long enough that he could almost brush the crate with his fingertips. “Gotta be in one of these books…” 

Getting a hand on his chest, she pushed him back, and he obeyed, though they both knew it was a token push at best, and he could have overpowered her in a second anyways. Hands braced on the pillow on either side of his head, and it would be so easy to straddle him, tease him more with what they both wanted. Seeing how he looked up at her, like she was the best thing he’d ever seen and simply to be there was his fondest dream, her breath caught. _How do you see that in me?_

He noticed the pause. Of course he did. His hand came up, callused palm against her cheek, cradling it gently. “Hey. It’s OK. Hey.” He tugged her down, gathering her in close, tucking her in against his side. Both of them adjusting carefully, still finding what worked, not yet anything close to instinctive--her sliding up a little to rest her head in the hollow of his neck, his arm moving just that bit so it wasn’t digging into her hip. She closed her eyes for a moment, reaching out to where seconds ago she’d playfully pushed him, fingers splayed over his chest, feeling his steady heartbeat beneath her hand. “What is it?” he finally asked a few minutes later.

“October is--a year ago, you were in prison afraid they were going to come kill you and not knowing what happened to me, and I was my mom’s prisoner ready to kill or strand myself in St. Mihiel to take out the Mothership. Two years ago--”

“Two years ago I dragged you into this. I was a monster, as bad as I’d get, and you lost Amy,” he said, voice rough and low and weary. She felt the tension in his body then.

“Don’t. That’s behind us. We can’t live there, Garcia.” _Don’t beat yourself up and make me watch it again._ “Four years ago, Rittenhouse came for you, and Iris and Lorena. So all in all, October’s not a good month for either of us.”

She both heard and felt his slow exhaling sigh. “It’s not. But this year, we have this, don’t we? We have each other. We have our friends. That helps.”

“Yeah. But maybe it’s...I don’t know. Change of season too. But we’re getting so close to getting Rufus back, and you know what that means. We go back.”

He turned himself on his side now, facing her, reaching out to clasp her hand in his, holding on tightly. It still startled her sometimes seeing the last traces of the pale band of skin where his wedding ring had been, but it comforted her to know he’d wanted her to know that he’d made his choice to let Lorena go, and he’d stick with it. For well or ill, Garcia Flynn didn’t do anything by halves. “Well, according to the mission report, it won’t be exactly the same. This timeline, it happened in 1887 Hells Canyon, not 1888 San Francisco.”

“Does it really matter that it’s a year earlier and a different West Coast state? Jiya got stranded for three years, we went to get her. Rufus died. My mother and great-grandfather died, for that matter. Jessica chose Emma, at least then.”

His eyes studied her intently, but there was a warmth of understanding in them all the same. “But what you’re really thinking is that we lost Rufus, and both of us almost died to boot. That’s probably the closest call you’ve had since--”

“Salem.” She inhaled, sharper than she intended, forcing herself to calm down on the exhale. _Fear isn’t real._ “And even then I was pissed off and determined and fighting.” He’d probably been more scared for her than she’d been, given how shaken he’d looked when they finally met up again. Even in Holmes’ lockbox, she’d found a calm focus, knew that if she tried, if she listened to Houdini’s advice and mastered her fear, she could find her own way out of this. “It wasn’t the same. I hadn’t felt so helpless since the first mission, when the _Hindenburg_ went down.” Watching the flaming wreckage burn, and then blitzed by a tall, terrifying stranger confronting her with her own handwriting, and then grabbing her, pulling her close, his arm around her neck, his too-rapid breath stirring against her hair, the way his clothing smelled faintly of camphor, like he’d dug 1930’s antiques out of someone’s closet.

She eyed him sharply, but he met her gaze steadily, albeit a bit warily. “I have to wonder sometimes. If--if I _had_ to lose Amy for us to succeed. Because losing her was what gave me the strength to get back in that Lifeboat again and again after I was so terrified. It made me so angry, so determined. Without that, I might well have told Denise to kiss off and to find another historian.” She wanted nothing more than a hot shower when she got home, a good stiff drink, and to try to forget all of it as some crazy nightmare where she almost got shot. No way was she going to go confront that madman Garcia Flynn again, let alone his unsettling and ridiculous journal.

“You confused me so much the night before. You were so different. But there you were less than a day later, yelling at me in 1865, brave as anything. And I could see--something familiar about you. Something that made me think it wasn’t all a crazy delusion to believe Lucy Preston gave me the journal. But it was really you.” He pulled her even closer, so close she felt like she could feel the very bones of him, strong and solid. Brushing his lips across her brow, holding on to her as tightly as he had that night in Lakehurst. “Two things. I shut it down as hard as I could, but some part of me was still scared as hell to get in that Mothership too. Scared as hell to see you again. Two years I’d waited, and I didn’t know what I was doing, or exactly why I was following some cryptic notes in this magic diary, only that this was apparently the only way forward. And I was committed to it, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t daunting.” It comforted her to know that, strangely enough. He’d seemed so implacable, so fierce and frightening, through most of those early missions. Hearing that something of the human side of him had been there even then helped. 

“I think you’re right. About Amy. Because I’ve thought a lot lately that this other me, the one from this timeline--he didn’t lose Lorena and Iris. Didn’t start all of this. He was a good man, but I know things he didn’t because of the way this has gone. About Rittenhouse, about Emma, about myself. And I think maybe...maybe we need that to win. Maybe Wyatt needed to lose Jessica in 2012, in order to care enough now to bring her back. Maybe we need Jiya’s visions. Maybe you needed to be determined enough to stick around.”

“Maybe. And Mom and Emma erasing her for good just made me even more determined to fight back and beat them. So maybe there’s some comfort in knowing if Amy had to--die, that something good came of it. She’d appreciate that. But her life was worth a lot more than me finding my courage. Lorena and Iris’ lives meant a lot more to you than giving you determination to fight Rittenhouse. They were people. People we loved. We can’t reduce them to just being...an instrument.”

He met her eyes, shifting slightly, his other arm folding beneath his head to pillow it. “A tool,” he corrected her gently, and she nodded at that. Remembered telling him that he needed to see himself as more than that. The people they loved and lost needed to be more than that too. “And of course they were so much more than...than some kind of emotional purpose. So of course it still hurts.”

“You said you’re not being reckless anymore. But neither of us has to be. It’s a war. I could lose you. And I’m not sure I can handle that.”

He wet his lips, eyes lowering from hers.“I lost Lorena. I don’t think I can lose you. I don’t know how Jiya’s managed.”

“She’s incredibly strong. And she wasn’t alone, like you were.” She shook her head, shifting close, reaching out to put an arm around him. “I wish I could have been there. With you.”

“I had the journal, at least. I had some hope. That I could beat Rittenhouse. That you and I would fight them together.”

“But that was words on a page. And me being careful to not say too much. it wasn’t the same as having me.”

“No. But it kept me going.”

Pushing up, slipping out from under his arm, she sat up and grabbed the satsuma crate, pulling it towards the edge of the desk. Finding the small volume, there with its cracked and worn black leather, the tie-strings replaced and the red leather of them dark with wear, the gold leaf of the monogram long since worn off and only the embossing remained. “You said you didn’t read this journal.”

He sat up behind her, shifting carefully to sit beside her on the edge of the bed. “I didn’t think I needed to. It got me here, but...things had changed already from what was written. And I had you.”

“But it got you here. Both you, and the you from this timeline. That means it was important here.” She looked down at it, opening to a random page. “I skimmed it. There’s a lot of history from missions we’ve done, some we haven’t--yet? Some of _your_ history apparently, and stuff about where you’ll be in various years. There’s some personal stuff from me, but it seems like not quite as much as you kept claiming I wrote.”

“There maybe wouldn’t be in this one. That me, without Rittenhouse sending an assassination squad, wouldn’t have needed a--a companion. A friend. Not like I did, setting out for a few years alone and in hiding. I needed to believe someone was waiting for me at the end of that. Someone who not only would fight beside me, someone who cared. You must have known that.”

“But it got you here all the same. So it must have been needed. If it wasn’t São Paulo in 2014, when would I have given it to you? A long time ago, by the look of it.”

He sat there, hands on his knees, head half-bowed in thought. She stayed silent, let him think. “It’s not the same. You wouldn’t have walked up to me directly then, introduced yourself, but...I needed that much direct intervention in 2014 to keep myself alive. But maybe…”

“What?” She corrected herself. “Where and when?”

“The last time I was wounded as badly as I was in Chinatown--or Hells Canyon, whichever--it was 1995. I was twenty. My first time fighting in Chechnya. We were in the mountains near Grozny. It was November. Getting cold. I was on scout patrol, and I’d left Dynamite getting a drink at a stream. I was headed to a village to try to get some food. A missile went off nearby. Took a big shard of shrapnel in my gut. Enough so that if I hadn’t gotten treatment, I’d probably have been dead by morning from internal bleeding. Danil told me some American woman, somehow he thought was a reporter on the war, got me back to our camp, and from there, he got me down to Grozny. I don’t remember much of anything after getting off Dynamite’s back, until I woke in the hospital. I apparently hit my head too and ended up with a concussion. But,” he said, turning now to look at her, that look of dawning certainty in his eyes. “I had books in my pack. Most of which ended up ruined thanks to blood, and my landing in the water. I ended up reading ‘War and Peace’ twice because it was about the only thing that survived intact, until Danil brought me more books.” 

She didn’t say anything, because making a joke about that seemed off-kilter, given the sense that they’d entered another of those moments between them. The ones where the mystical and seemingly impossible became real, and somehow they talked about it as ordinarily as what to order for Chinese take-out to watch a movie together. All of that was between them, but she could recognize the gravity of it. She nodded, indicating she was following, and for him to go on.

“The nurses said I lost some other books, and my notebooks. I was doing some schoolwork type stuff, and also keeping some notes myself, on the war, on the people, the sights and the like. Safe for me to do it since almost nobody in Chechnya spoke English, and more people knew the Cyrillic alphabet than the Latin one anyway, but...maybe you _did_ try to give me the journal once before, and it got wrecked and destroyed by being in there with all those other wet books. Whether you brought the journal or not on that trip for that version of me, I’m thinking you were that supposed reporter.”

For a split second she wanted to say _that’s impossible_ , imagining herself in the Caucasus Mountains more than twenty years ago. But so much that had been impossible had become possible, magic that was real rather than Houdini’s impressive illusions. She thought of that black leather jacket, sized for a large man, that had hung in her closet for years, and that black leather-bound journal. Something fell into place with a neat mental _click_. She looked over at him, reaching over and lacing her fingers through his carefully. “Tell me something. If you had never met Lorena, what would your life have been like? Careerwise?” She felt like she already knew the answer.

Comprehension dawned in his eyes, and he gave a sharp, curt nod in response. “Without her? I was just a kid when I saw some of the ethnic cleansing when Yugoslavia was coming apart. I saw it again in Darfur, and it was even worse. It felt like nothing had changed, nothing would ever change, and I’d been at war already for nearly fifteen years. I was so tired, Lucy. I probably would have quit then. But instead I met Lorena there. She made me want to keep fighting the good fight, at least until we had Iris to worry over, because she cared so much, because she believed in people.”

She held his gaze with hers for a long, long time, neither of them saying anything, living in that unspoken understanding. Then she finally broke the moment with a small smile. “You know, in 1995, I was twelve and wanted to grow up to be Gwen Stefani. Mom was appalled.”

He returned the smile. “Of course she was.”

“But I think in 1995, I was also older and there in Chechnya. Saving your life, giving you the journal so you believed and stuck around, became a high level NSA affiliate in 2016 for Denise to come find you. You seem pretty certain of it.” He nodded at that, holding onto her hand tightly like it was a lifeline. It made too much sense. She and the journal had given him direction and purpose in this timeline, exactly as they had in the other one. “Just like I’m sure you were the one who pulled me out of San Francisco Bay in 2003. Despite your also being in Afghanistan. You save me, I give up the idea of quitting history, so I’m a historian at Stanford in 2016 when Denise finds me.”

“It makes sense. You rescue me, I rescue you.”

She couldn’t help it, gripping him by the shoulder, leaning in, awkwardly half-sprawled across his lap as she adjusted, but not really caring. Right before she kissed him, she asked, “That’s what we do, isn’t it? We save each other.” Not just each other’s lives, but purpose, sanity, anything else. Whatever ouroboros they had between them, fate or destiny or _meant to be_ , it slowly transformed into a comfort somewhere along the way rather than something daunting. She was bound to him, as he was to her, but they’d chosen the shape of what that had become. “Every day,” she whispered against his cheek, twining her arms around his neck. 

He responded to that, and she could feel the hunger in her, in him, for more than a kiss, sensing that dark and thrilling pull. But they kept it in check. Maybe he didn’t need to entirely give up the man for the mission, as he’d said, but they did have a mission to worry about, and it had to be one of the most important ones of their lives. For Rufus’ sake, they’d both throw almost all their focus there. There would be time for the two of them after. She had to believe that God would be good enough to grant them that, after all they’d suffered and lost. “We’ll be careful in Hells Canyon,” she said, staying there on his lap, her cheek pressed against his.

He sighed, and she felt his left hand, resting against her back and supporting her, flexing restlessly. “We will. We’ll plan the hell out of this mission, trust me. But...I just had the thought.” She lifted her head, sensing she’d want to look at him for this. “The Lifeline will need testing, Lucy.” His eyes in the autumn sunlight shone brightly, gold-dappled green, watching her carefully and weighing what she must be thinking, feeling. “Maybe Hunger Games you and Wyatt swore up and down it was fine and safe, but we won’t know that we did it right until it’s tested. It’s going to be dangerous.” 

She swallowed hard, seeing where he was going. “And Jiya can’t go. We can’t lose our best pilot, and we sure as hell can’t lose her right before we hopefully bring Rufus back. And we need Wyatt there. Whether he and Jessica work out, she’s in a weird place right now. If he dies or disappears, she might still fold, figure Rittenhouse is all she’s got.” 

He nodded, slowly and carefully. “It’s you and me.”

“Even if the Lifeline test itself isn’t dangerous, Garcia, these missions aren’t going to be a walk in the park. It’s not like hopping to 2005 just to prove it can be done.”

“Much as I’m sure that checking out a revived Alice In Chains in concert could be fun, doubt Connor and Jiya would agree to it. We need to go cross our lifelines and actually act to influence something, not just play tourist, or else we won’t know that we can change things enough to save Rufus. If you and I can save each other’s lives? We know it’ll work. We can give Jiya that confidence.” 

“I know. But you could drown trying to save me. I could get blown up trying to save you, or, I don’t know, fall off a cliff. Our younger selves could still die and we could survive, but come back to a world where we’re time ghosts.” Only they would remember each other, and some people might think that notion was weirdly romantic, but she honestly thought it was horrifying. She’d been so alone, and so had he, and they’d both been in solitary confinement. Maybe people who’d been through that knew there was nothing lovable about being forcibly isolated from the rest of the world.

He exhaled deeply, then gave one of those whimsical, wry smiles he had, the sort that told her he was trying to cover up some deeper feeling. “All the more reason for it to be just you and me that go. It’s not exactly what I’d have wanted for our first trip as a couple, but, hey, we’re very non-traditional, right?”

She sighed, rolling her eyes, grateful all the same for the quip that somehow cut the fear down to size and made of it a manageable thing. “You’re impossible, I swear.”

He kissed her lightly on the lips. “Well, I’ve seen you make the impossible possible, _ljubavi._ ”

Not fair, but she managed to not knock him flat and kiss him senseless, and beyond. As was, when he broke the kiss off, she braced herself up on his shoulders. When she’d met Ellie, seen Ethan, she’d stopped by the house for a few things. Stood there with the lights off, not wanting to touch much of it, because right now it didn’t help. She’d grabbed a few books, a couple of small mementos--much fewer now that Amy hadn’t been there to buy them for her--and then hesitated. She’d gone to the closet, grabbed the leather bomber jacket, and then fetched the blank journal from the bookshelf. Stuffed them both in the bag and zipped it shut decisively. Somehow, she must have known she’d need them now. 

She climbed off his lap, and went to dig in the crate, found the blank journal. Laid it on the desk, putting its battered twin next to it, eyeing the two of them, past and present and future. She heard him get up from the bed behind her, sensed him there by her side, presumably looking at the pair of journals himself. “We’ve got a few weeks left until the Lifeline is done. And it looks like we need a journal.”

He reached out and put a hand on the cover of the old journal. “Do you just want to copy it?”

The Lucy she’d been before the Alamo and so many other things would have panicked, needed to get it perfect, letter-for-letter. “No. Maybe I wrote this one, but maybe it was some other version of me, someone a little different. And it’s got to give you enough faith to keep you willing to keep fighting for another twenty years. ” She couldn’t help but smirk a little bit. “From my years with students, here’s some advice for you for the future if you start teaching--you can always tell when someone phoned it in and copied.” 

He laughed at that, withdrew his hand, and it came to rest lightly on her shoulder. “True. Better that it be something real. So you and I, we’ll write it. Together.”

~~~~~~~~~~

Life in the covert ops business had a certain rhythm to it. The lulls, waiting and watching and researching and observing, sometimes struggling to maintain readiness. The thing most people never knew about being at war was how much of it was simply _waiting_ , and trying to not die of boredom. But eventually, something caught, launched the whole thing, and the sense was in the air that now they were going somewhere, and it would be soon. Then everything started going faster, fiercer, everyone practically vibrating with an intense sense of purpose.

It took him nearly a year of being on the run before he had gotten enough money, ID, and the like to have a safety net, and to do more than try to stay alive and out of Interpol’s hands. He hadn’t dared go near Danil in Berlin and drag him into the whole mess. It didn’t escape his notice, with an instinctive cringe, that much like fugitive Nazis seventy years earlier, he’d found South America a very effective place to hide from those hunting him. 

He’d been holed up in Buenos Aires when he finally felt able to stopped running, living only in the moment, and start planning. He’d had a year to plan every detail of the strike on Mason Industries in obsessive detail, from recruiting Anthony onward. Far longer than he’d had to plan any other mission in his life, but this one would be the most important, with an almost infinite number of moving parts.

This time, they had a few weeks. Though honestly, they’d spent the last five months prepping the team, ever since the future versions of Wyatt and Lucy who he’d tongue-in-cheek dubbed Katniss and Peeta had dropped in for a little chat. He’d run enough teams himself to know that their chances of success were so much better now for all they’d been through together, how much stronger they all were individually and as a group than they’d been in the immediate aftermath of Chinatown. 

But they’d hit crunch time now. Mere weeks to go before they pulled the trigger. Time to plan. They’d gotten serious back after the Warne mission, when the team so nearly fell apart completely, and the schedule had intensified. That suited him. He didn’t do well with inaction. But as hard as they’d run for nearly four months, they’d have to go even harder in the weeks to come. There would be time for PS4 and karaoke and the rest later. Right now, they’d have to cut out anything superfluous, go at a schedule like marathoners finally hitting the last mile, giving it everything they had left, everything they’d held back until now.

It tugged at echoes of the fanatic he’d been when he’d stolen the Mothership. He could be that man again in part, access that obsessive drive. But this time, the fierce determination was properly in harness with the friends and teammates he needed, and his own internal limits. 

Sitting at the dining room table, dishes cleared away and that intense feeling in the air, he could only call this what it was--a war council. Jiya led off, tapping her fingers idly on the edge of the table, dark eyes studying all of them in turn. “We all did our reading assignment this afternoon and went through the file about the Hells Canyon mission, right?” Murmurs of assent answered her. “Denise, is there anything in there you didn’t write down?”

“Not really,” she admitted. Michelle and the kids were at the theater, seeing “A Star Is Born”, and here was Denise Christopher, missing out because of work. Some part of him ached for her on that, remembering far too many times he’d been gone too for things both big and small. But at least she’d listened and moved them here, and he could see the different in made in her, how the tension in her had eased, how she smiled more. She’d needed them. 

Olivia was eleven. He wondered if she and nine-year-old Iris might have been friends. Tried to shut the thought out because right now he couldn’t let that in. He’d let Lorena go--mostly. He’d had to. But she was easier. She was alive, happy, and he’d had to let go in order to hope for anything with Lucy. But Iris still had the power to take his breath away. Still gone, and losing a lover was bad enough, but losing a child--still seemed so unnatural, so unfair. Jiya wasn’t wrong that it happened all throughout history, and perhaps having a child was even more a profound act of faith and hope that they might survive, but that didn’t mean they’d felt any less pain in losing them. 

“It’s a bit sparse,” Denise continued, looking away with an awkward grimace. “I...didn’t press you that hard then, and it was only a few weeks alter when the Zenger mission happened and those versions of you vanished. I had intended to do a more thorough debrief to gather as much information as we had.”

Nobody said it, but he sensed they all knew it--Denise had been kind, and that was great, but it may have cost them some information. “We have the basics,” he said. “We have a mission outline, which is frankly more than we’ve ever had.” Not even the journal had been nearly so specific. There had been facts, implications, but he’d had to try to decipher it all into some kind of strategy. Gave him a hell of a headache trying to figure out why this history professor wanted him to know about Jacksonian politics or the New Deal, and she gave him facts, but not the ones he needed. What _exactly_ was the target, the mission, the objective here? He’d been guessing most of the time, especially early on with making bold but largely blind moves until he got a better feel for the war and Rittenhouse, and look how that had turned out. 

“And--yeah, you’re right, pressing traumatized operatives doesn’t always work well,” Wyatt added. He glanced over at Wyatt, meeting his eyes. Maybe the man was right. Maybe it was easier to read it as something that happened to another team, try to read and plan like any other mission. Treat it as ordinary intel. He saw Wyatt’s slight nod of acknowledgment. They, and Denise, were the professionals here.

So he asked the two of them like he would have at an intel roundtable for Illyrian. “So, summary of the known facts?”

Wyatt started off, words crisp and certain. He’d been Delta for years, had obviously run through his share of mission briefings. “May 27th, 1887, eastern Oregon along the Snake River, near the Idaho and Washington borders. Four enemy operatives, chasing one of the Lifeboat team who’d been stranded there. The stranded operative was working in Lewiston as a goods merchant. She was headed out to a site where that day, and the next, over thirty Chinese miners were slaughtered nearby.”

“Making a delivery, it says,” Jiya said. “Some merchants in the gold fields would do that. For friends, anyway. I must have been close to some of the miners.”

“That was the Hells Canyon massacre,” Lucy chimed in. “Killed for their gold, and their claim, by local thugs that day and the next. Probably one of the worst anti-Chinese incidents in the West.” 

“So Rittenhouse got there, and found the cabin where the killers were hanging out.” 

“From the report, Emma, Carol, Nicholas, and her six new racist murder-buddies set out a cabin nearby towards the main Chinese mining camp in Hells Canyon.”

“Presumably planning to intercept Jiya and do some warm-up killing before proceeding to the main event.” Screw it. He couldn’t quite talk about it with pure objectivity, especially not with Jiya herself sitting right there, referring to that person as herself anyway. It was intensely personal for all of them. That was what had carried them along since limping back to the bunker in May, wounded and shattered. Might as well admit to being so deeply involved, and try to make that their strength. 

Wyatt sat back in his chair, eyes distant and thoughtful. “Jessica stayed behind to guard the cabin.” None of them spoke up on that, and there was an awkward pause for a moment. “From Jiya’s report, we found her en route to the would-be massacre site right about when the ambushers did. There was a fairly intense gunfight. We somehow killed all six of the gang--very good shooting, must have had good position from cover to start? Emma took the opportunity to kill Carol Preston and Nicholas Keynes.”

“Maybe she was going to blame that on the Chinese too,” Lucy said dryly. “But if we were behind cover, we must have come out. Rufus was fatally wounded, also in the throat this time. Garcia was wounded badly in the chest. Jiya and Wyatt stayed with Rufus. I took off after Emma, managed to wound her horse. We fought.” She looked across the table at him, something fierce and proud entering her expression. _I lost then, in both timelines. I wouldn’t lose now._

He looked her directly in the eyes. _I know you wouldn’t._ “I chased after Lucy and Emma.”

Wyatt picked up the thread again. “While you were gone, we had to clear out in a hurry because we heard more gunfire. Wounded, almost out of bullets, figured it was either Jessica firing at us,” his voice faltered for a moment at her name, tapping his notes with a finger tip, “more local killers, or more Rittenhouse agents. We left Rufus’ body there, and found you and Lucy. Emma presumably went and picked Jessica up, and headed out.”

“So that’s the facts,” Connor broke in. “How do we change this?”

“Well, you’re the time travel nerd, Connor.”

“Garcia, don’t make me annoyed with you. We were doing so well.”

He shrugged, giving a wry smile. “Objectively, we could just try to drop in, knock our other selves out, kidnap Rufus, and hurry back. Occam’s razor, right?”

“Oh my God, what _is_ it with you and kidnapping people? How many times did you kidnap-slash-capture Lucy?” Wyatt said. 

“It was only once,” he grumbled. “OK, maybe twice, if you count Paris.” 

“Garcia,” Lucy groaned, head in her hands.

“The _Hindenburg_? Or Castle Varlar? Hell, you captured all of us during the Watergate mission,” Wyatt insisted.

Well, this suddenly had gotten awkward. Jiya broke the tension. “So hey, if Lucy and Garcia have some weird kidnapping kink, I really _do not care_. Can we focus?”

He had the strangest urge to just start laughing like an idiot. Lucy went bright red, mouth working for several seconds before she finally protested, pointing a finger at Jiya. “We don’t--”

“Don’t want to hear about it,” Jiya cut her off. “Heard enough about my teammates’ sex lives in the bunker, thanks.” She shot a sidelong look at Wyatt, who gave an embarrassed smile of acknowledgment. 

Connor gave a discreet cough. “Anyway, Occam’s razor, yes, but it’s not so simple. Given what we’ve experienced of time travel and how the timeline usually tries to follow the path of least resistance, grabbing Rufus and running may not work. Particularly since we don’t know how the Lifeline works, and how much elasticity, shall we say, from the timeline is diverted to resisting the effects of crossing one’s lifeline. Which leaves less give for the changes to the timeline itself. That may mean you can’t do other things easily either.”

“What, like kill Emma if we have the chance? Why not?” Jiya said.

“Tempting as the prospect is, I say no,” he told them.

“Seriously, though, Why not?” Lucy broke in, shaking her head. “The chance to win the war in one fell swoop?”

Garcia gestured towards Wyatt. “He’s Special Forces. He knows why, I imagine.” 

Wyatt nodded in acknowledgment. “Most of the time we’ve had to get there and figure it out. This time? We know the mission. This isn’t some video game quest with five quest objectives. When you have a plan, you pick one objective, you stick with it, or else you risk the whole mission and your team.”

He had to be honest with them and himself here. “I did that in 1780. I saw an opportunity to try to end it right then and there, jumped at it, and it was a mistake.”

“We all did,” Wyatt said. “We all got impatient and agreed to go take out David Rittenhouse with you. The plan was sloppy, Rittenhouse saw through it, and we all would have died.” His mouth twisted in an angry grimace. “Or in Lucy’s case, maybe even worse. Rufus saved all our asses. He did it more than once. You let everything else fall by the wayside if need be to get that one thing done, if it’s that important. And I think we agree that Rufus is that important to us.”

“More important than killing Emma?” Jiya said slowly. It seemed like she was arguing against it. But he thought he understood. She couldn’t bear to get him back and hold him close, knowing that his life, her happiness, had been bought at the price of winning the war easily. Too much guilt for one person to bear.

“Look, I hate her as much as anyone. But we’ll get other chances to get Emma,” he told her. “Besides, we learned with Rittenhouse that killing one person never does it.” Like he’d told Lucy, killing John Rittenhouse wouldn’t have destroyed Rittenhouse. He’d have become their martyr rather than their next leader. “Lucy’s plan and Ethan’s spying took most of them out. We’ve kept whittling them down since. Emma’s aggressive, and smart, but also shortsighted and selfish. She won’t hitch her wagon to anyone else, even if it’s to Rittenhouse’s benefit. We have to keep taking them out, one by one. We keep doing that, maybe eventually some of the weaker ones walk away. And once she loses all her minions, we’ll get to Emma eventually.”

“Defeat all the minions to get the boss fight,” Jiya said with a trace of a smile.

“Exactly,” he agreed. “But this? This is our one chance to get Rufus back. So yes, I agree with Wyatt. Rufus is more important on this mission.” Jiya’s eyes shone too bright for a moment at that, obviously moved by it, but she didn’t look away.

“Me too,” Lucy said. “I said in Chinatown that we were all coming home. It may be six months delayed, and the mission is a bit different. But I still mean it. That’s our only goal here--somehow, some way, we’re going to save Rufus.”

Jiya nodded at that, licking her lips almost nervously. “Thanks,” she said, voice rough and low and oddly soft. “But--how are we going to do that, if we have to try to change things as little as possible? Does that mean he still has to get shot?”

“You _can_ get shot nearly fatally.” After a moment Wyatt said, “Uh, sorry if that sounded dickish, Garcia.”

He resisted the urge to roll his eyes, somehow. “It’s fine. So Wyatt and I both learned some field medic basics on the job, right?”

“What, are you saying I didn’t take care of him? I couldn’t! He got shot, he died quickly,” Wyatt said, shaking his head in disagreement.

“I didn’t see the wound clearly then, because I was chasing after Emma and Lucy. And when we came back…”

“Neither of us was in a state to look closely or ask many questions,” Lucy agreed. They’d both been staggering, leaning heavily on each other. He had the feeling tiny as she was, she’d been half-carrying him, on the ragged edge of passing out more than once himself. Jiya had been clutching Rufus, crying, Wyatt sitting there looking beyond exhaustion. “Then that gunshot happened, what, only like a minute later, from what this says? And you had to run.”

“He was dead,” Wyatt said raggedly. “He was dead, of _course_ he was dead.”

God, he hated this feeling, knowing he’d probably hurt both of them in asking. “Was the blood arterial? Bright red, heavy long distance spray?”

“No,” Wyatt said. “But he was unconscious. No pulse. I felt it, Garcia. He absolutely had no pulse.”

“Lorena was an ER nurse, and a Red Cross medic in Darfur. I picked up some more from her. One of the things I learned is that people look dead from blood loss before they are. There’s often still a window of time to try to get pressure on the wound and get them to safety. If it wasn’t the carotid artery--and believe me, you two would have looked like you’d been through a literal bloodbath--the shot nicked his jugular.” He remembered the scene in the prison cafeteria all too well, and couldn’t help but glance at Lucy, knowing she would know where his thoughts turned. “He went unconscious quickly from shock, and his heartbeat was probably nearly undetectable, especially not to someone with their adrenaline racing.”

Jiya let out a moaning, keening cry. “He was still alive, and we _left him_ there to die?” Wyatt looked about ready to be sick himself.

“Jiya. Listen. It wouldn’t have made a difference,” he told her. “Chinatown was right in the middle of a busy city even then. We had to park the Lifeboat, what, how far out?” He looked at Lucy, trying to get confirmation. She’d grown up there in San Francisco.

“You were out in the marsh near Dogpatch. So probably at least three miles,” Jiya answered him, something settling in her expression, the fear and horror fading slightly.

“We had to,” Lucy said. “You lived there, Jiya. You saw how much San Francisco sprawled out even then, and Chinatown was towards the end of the peninsula. Hemmed in. There was nowhere to hide the Lifeboat anywhere nearby. The tech isn’t good enough yet to safely land it in or on an empty building. And Garcia was too wounded to help carry Rufus, and I was struggling to breathe after Emma strangled me, so I wouldn’t have been useful either. You and Wyatt would have had to carry him that whole way. It took us close to an hour to walk that far, without carrying a wounded man, and even with us finally hitching a ride on that wagon because Garcia was about to pass out, it was still at least forty minutes to make it back.” She glanced over at him. _Am I right? Is that where you’re going?_

He gave her a slight nod, confirming it, and she gestured for him to keep going with it. “Even with pressure on the wound, Rufus wouldn’t have lasted long enough to have made it back to the Lifeboat alive, let alone to us jumping back to the bunker and then racing him to a hospital.” He looked at Jiya and Wyatt, and said it as clearly as he could, hoping it chased away the guilt. “With the situation we had in Chinatown, there was absolutely no way Rufus could have survived. I have to imagine it was as bad for us in Hells Canyon.” Maybe he’d been clinging to the last shreds of life when they’d been run off by that second round of gunshots, but he’d been doomed from the moment he got shot. Thirty seconds or ten minutes to die wouldn’t have made a difference in that case.

Jiya’s brows knit, jaw tight with determination. “So we get ready to watch our other selves get chased off, fight the remaining racist goons off, grab Rufus, and run?”

“How good is your piloting?” Wyatt asked.

She slanted him an annoyed look. “A lot better than yours, thanks.”

He coughed awkwardly. “I mean, how precise can you get?” He looked over at Connor. “Any way to improve that over the next few weeks?”

Connor gave him a look to match Jiya’s. “Bloody marvelous, the faith you have in my work. A GPS in your car can get you within four meters with reliable satellite coverage. You think my geo-nav is that much worse? It’s already accurate and precise to within perhaps twelve to fifteen meters, which given the massive additional calculations to correct for time-based geographical shifts, correction for difference due to Earth’s rotation and orbit, and doing it all without a satellite signal, _none_ of which your humdrum Garmin has to worry about, thank you very much, is quite the feat. You lot just don’t pay much mind to that level of precision, given you’re having to jump it where nobody will see.”

It clicked, and he couldn’t help but grin at it. “So--Jiya‘s bringing in the ambulance?”

“You’ve got it,” Wyatt confirmed. “We can’t jump right there to begin, because who knows what that will mess up. But if we’re waiting nearby when the fight breaks out, if Jiya rides back in a hurry to jump the Lifeboat right to the battle site, we can rush in, stabilize Rufus while Jiya’s making the jump, get Rufus in there--”

“Jump right back to 2018 and to a hospital,” Lucy chimed in. “God, seriously, why have we not looked up coordinates for one already so we could jump right there?” He knew. They hadn’t wanted to think about the risk of injury that severe. Besides, most injuries that severe probably would be fatal, given the task of evacuating someone from the past to the Lifeboat and then making the jump. Though he could say from experience that jumping with a gunshot wound didn’t seem to put more stress on the injury. Presumably Rufus could say the same after his date with Capone’s pistol.

“Presumably because maybe a strange craft landing in a hospital parking lot, smashing cars, and the like, is going to cause more questions than the government would like to deal with,” Denise answered her dryly. “However. This one? Life or death? We’re gonna let that slide.”

“It’s fine,” Connor said. “I’ll run a satellite search filter. Find a top-notch trauma hospital with an open grassy field across the street, get the coordinates. Keep that as our standby for utter emergencies. Problem solved. Make all that NSA data work for us, right?”

“Well, if I hadn’t started a war with Rittenhouse in my timeline, or been an NSA agent here who presumably slipped you access to that info, you wouldn’t have that database either. You’re welcome for that, by the way,” he said cheerfully. Connor rolled his eyes and threw a crumpled piece of paper at him.

“So, fine. Jiya gets the Lifeboat, we get Rufus to a hospital,” Wyatt said. 

“Another bit of luck in this timeline. I have an NSA badge I can wave at the hospital to shut down questions. Probably get us further than coming in looking like some random historical re-enactment lunatics.” Or random historical re-enactment lunatics, one of whom was one of Interpol’s Most Wanted. That could have gotten awkward.

Denise nodded at that. “All right. Connor, how long before the Lifeline’s fully ready?”

“At this point, I’d say two weeks.”

Lucy shot a look his way, and of course the conversation would turn there next. “The Lifeline will need to be tested after that.”

“Of course,” Connor said. “Charmingly insistent as your dystopian selves were that this would work, I’m not risking this mission and Rufus’ life without testing it with the Lifeline in it.” He raised an eyebrow. “I do still own the Lifeboat, you know.”

“Technically, it’s DHS/NSA property,” Denise said.

“Oh, what, eminent bloody domain?” Connor scoffed. “Denise, really.”

“Can we not?” Jiya said. “Lucy, you were saying. Testing.”

She nodded, a little too rapidly. “Garcia and I have a plan on that. Connor, you cleared me to pilot a while ago. Garcia passed a few weeks ago. You can check our calculations before we go. There are...look, I’m going to just say this, and maybe it sounds crazy, but like three quarters of what we see and do these days does too. Garcia saved my life when I was younger, and I saved his. There’s absolutely no way it was our selves who existed at that time, which means the Lifeline was involved. And if we can pull that off, if we can go and change the timeline enough to have kept each other alive when we should have died, we’ll know we can do it. We can save Rufus.”

Wyatt inhaled sharply, a hand down on the table, half-rising as if to protest. “Your car wreck you told me about?” he asked Lucy. “That was him that pulled you out of the water?” She nodded. Wyatt turned his gaze to Garcia next. “What about you?”

No point in not telling him. They’d figure some of it out from the Lifeboat jump coordinates. “Bad shrapnel wound while I was in Chechnya. Some American woman got me to safety. I think we all know who it must have been.”

Connor finally spoke up, tracing his lips with his forefinger. “Shouldn’t Jiya go with, in case of piloting issues?”

Lucy shook her head. He let her keep explaining this one. They might trust him by this point, but it would always be Lucy that was the team’s heart, the one who could talk them into anything, rally them behind her ideas. “If something goes wrong with the Lifeline, and he or I don’t make it back, you need Jiya as a pilot and historian. And you’ll need Wyatt as your soldier. Anyway, even if it goes totally wrong, we’ve proven you can effectively rebuild a Lifeboat in about three and a half months, working on it only part time. If you have to, I imagine you can do it full time in six weeks. Hopefully you won’t lose much ground to Emma.”

“Don’t worry about the damn Lifeboat,” Wyatt said, tone turning almost angry, “it’s you that we need.” He shot Garcia a glance. “Yeah, you too. So you’d both better come back alive, you hear me?”

 

“Heard,” he acknowledged, amused but touched all the same. 

“Besides,” Lucy said, giving them a gentle smile, “Rufus will need you,” addressing Jiya, and then turning to Wyatt, “and Jess needs you. So even if he and I hadn’t realized that we apparently have to save each other in the past, it would have had to be Garcia and me anyway. So I need you to trust us on this. The fact we’re here and alive means the Lifeline has to work, right?” 

Wyatt shook his head, looking incredulous. “At this point, I’ve gotta say, whatever you two have between you is so freakin’ weird and complicated, it’s like one of those Russian nesting dolls we saw in St. Petersburg. Open it up and it just keeps going until maybe someday you find the middle.”

As usual, the flippant reply rose far too easily to his lips. “That’s a much more elegant metaphor than a Tootsie Pop. Well done.”

Denise gave him a stern _senior agent in charge_ glower. “So we have the outline here. Looks like we have some work to fill it in over the next few weeks while work continues on the Lifeline. Hospital coordinates, appropriate field medic protocol for stabilizing Rufus, things like that. As many details as we can get on landing sites, Jiya’s medevac jump. Let’s fill in what gaps we can on the mission report with research. Lucy, Garcia, I want thorough mission plans on your Lifeline tests before I sign off on your going.” She looked at each of them in turn. “But if any team in the world could get this done and bring Rufus back, I know it’ll be the four of you.”

He held Lucy’s gaze across the table. They were closer than they’d ever been. Kissing her, holding her, touching her so casually, having it become something normal with far more ease than holding back had been, was still extraordinary to experience. After everything they’d been through already, keeping her alive, diving into San Francisco Bay to save her life? Trusting her to keep him alive in the Caucasus Mountains? Piece of cake in comparison.

Somewhere along the way, another wisp of Lorena’s ghost had slipped away in the night with a gentle goodbye. Because when he now woke every morning with her, his half-lucid instinctive thought towards the warmth of the woman in his arms, the soft murmurs, the smell of her hair, had turned from _Lorena_ to _Lucy_. Every day, they’d wake up, together, and they’d turn, together, to face another day and its challenges in this war. Turning a wrench, shooting a gun, researching, training, planning, standing beside her on the missions, taking time for the little things. They had a journal to finish writing, Lifeline missions to write up and carry out, a friend’s life to save, a future to pray for and to plan for, a murderous cult to finally defeat, and he wouldn’t have it any other way.


	25. 3x07: Gold Mountain (Lucy/Garcia: San Francisco, California/Grozny, Chechnya, May 2003/November 1995)

The Lifeboat felt strangely empty with just her in the pilot’s seat, and Garcia sitting in the nearest passenger chair. Connor confirmed the jump math. He’d paused one more time on the stairs, leaning back in for one more moment. “Luck to you both,” he said. No need for more than that. Jiya and Wyatt waited too, ready to see them off. She sat in the seat, fastening her harness with slightly unsteady fingers. She’d flown the simulator dozens of times, but this was the first real test, and it would be a big one. But she could do this. She had to believe that. 

She couldn’t see Garcia, turned around as her seat was to face the console, but after she pressed the control to close the hatch, she’d reached out a hand behind her, not surprised that he took hold of it and gripped it tightly as she breathed in, held it, and hit the jump button.

They hadn’t exploded into gory chunks, or been pulled apart into their component atoms. The ride felt a little rougher than usual, the landing a bit harder. They both stumbled from the Lifeboat on jelly-like legs, promptly both leaned over and thrown up. “Mental note--spaghetti is really not good coming back up,” he said with a groan. Shutting her eyes, keeping a hand on one of the Lifeboat’s tripod legs to steady herself, she had to agree. 

Mouth tasting of bile, and with her head pounding like Ringo Starr doing a drum solo on the walls of her skull, she turned to him. “Console says it’s 11:47 AM.” The sun, and the traffic lull on the highway below, supported that. “I looked at the clock in my car a few minutes before I crashed. We have about six hours to wait.” The chrono-nav being imprecise as it was, and especially given that there was no impulse to try to fiddle with it more when they already had a huge change with the Lifeline, they’d have to drop in, and wait it out. 

“Wait about three or four, then--do we need to go steal a car so we’re on the highway too for me to be a heroic passerby?” he answered, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. So they half-sat, half-collapsed on the small bluff overlooking San Francisco Bay, in the cool late spring grass. Late May, overcast and hazy, traffic quiet at the moment in a late morning lull. “We’d better be careful, though.

She looked down the hill, at Highway 101 passing a Conoco and a Wendy’s. “It was right around here,” Lucy said. He looked about as queasy as she felt. “I remember passing that Wendy’s after I dropped off my friend Lainey up in the city, and backtracking towards home knowing I was only like thirty, forty minutes away. Sorry, it’s not like I took a GPS fix--”

“You don’t need to apologize,” he told her. “At least you’ve narrowed it to a quarter-mile stretch or so.” He surveyed the scene below. “I feel like I’m missing binoculars.”

“Like that adds anything to the info?”

“No, but it looks very professional,” he joked. “All right, no need to steal a car. There’s enough commercial stuff around here for me to act like I saw the accident, park in a hurry nearby, and slip away once you’re all right.”

Grabbing a sip from the water bottle, trying to wash the taste out of her mouth, she handed it to him. “So, four hours.”

Smirking at her, he took a sip of water. “Now, I could think of a very good way for us to pass four hours, especially with something halfway towards privacy.” There was a tone in his voice, a low timbre that did unfair things to her. “If we didn’t have a mission and your life to worry about, and if my mouth didn’t taste like spaghetti vomit. Really not the right foot to start that off on.”

“Oh, so you’ve imagined it.” She kept her tone light and teasing, but she couldn’t help the curiosity all the same. Especially after St. Petersburg, after sleeping with him now every night, she had to wonder if he felt that pull intensifying, the thread between drawn even tighter and more tense, wondering and waiting and anticipating. Waking up some mornings with him right up against her like a giant space heater, arm flung over her, and feeling his mourning arousal hard and pressed against her hip, it was sometimes all she could do to not roll over, peel off their pajamas, and just give in already. If the room was more soundproof, she might well have done it. 

“Of course. I’ve had months to imagine, in detail, exactly what I’d like to do with you.” He slanted her a keenly intent look that promised all sorts of things that made her toes instinctively curl inside her sneakers. He shook his head, and the confident, nearly hypnotic aura vanished, leaving the awkward intensity so familiar to her by now. “Lucy, don’t you know? I swear, anytime from the first night you came to my room…” He gave a helpless half-shrug. “If you’d wanted me that night,” he said, voice rough and strangely hesitant, “I’m not sure I could have said no. I...Lucy, you finally _saw_ me. And that...that meant everything.”

“I thought about it,” she confessed, looking away from him for a moment, towards the sweep of the coast, watching a freighter lumbering its way up the bay. “But we were both tipsy, and it would have been a bad idea even if we were sober. We were both so lonely and so broken right then. You would have tried to give me more than I could take,” and thankfully he didn’t stick his foot in his mouth by turning that into a _that’s what she said_ joke, “and I couldn’t give you what you needed.” She let out a soft laugh. “Rushing in for all the wrong reasons seems to have been my romantic MO for way too long. I mean, right now I’m twenty years old and ready to quit school, all for this silly dream of starting a band. But I know it wasn’t _my_ dream. I would have done almost anything for her, because I just wanted to...to be with her, and yeah, maybe to escape Mom’s expectations and criticism. To live my own life, and to be loved.”

He reached out again, fingers brushing hers, not saying anything, just being there and understanding. He finally asked, “What happened to her?”

Lucy couldn’t help but laugh, but this time, wistfully and fondly, not with any kind of pain. “I broke up with her from the hospital in a panic. We talked a lot that summer, though. She ended up not quitting school. The band idea was as much her running from expectations as me--her dad left the reservation when he married her mom, and they moved to Sioux Falls. She had so much pressure to go to college, to achieve things for herself and for the Lakota people. So she got her bio degree, but she never quite made it to med school, because she started writing, and got published. Fantasy novels, with mingled mythologies from all the people in the Upper Midwest, some alternate history--” She was about ready to go through the usual spiel of how meaningful they were, how much it had meant for her friend to become a storyteller, but she was aware that compared to something like George RR Martin, Marissa’s stuff was a lot lesser known, and a lot more “experimental”, to quote her friend’s editor. In other words, _does not adhere to the usual pseudo-medieval Europe high fantasy tropes, so less marketable_.

He turned and looked at her in astonishment. “Seriously? Your college ex-girlfriend is Marissa Iron Cloud?” Lucy must have worn an equal look of surprise, though given what a voracious reader he was, maybe she shouldn’t have been shocked. “I about wore my paperback of ‘Singer of the Sky-Road’ out while I was in Belarus.” 

“She was so proud of that one. It made the Times bestseller list for a couple of weeks. She’s happily single. Lives up near Fargo with her dogs, cats, and a horse. We stayed friends, because we could both admit we ended up so intense so quickly because we were trying to escape things, but we were better as friends than lovers. She still sends me an autographed copy of every new book. We still talk--admittedly less so these last couple of years.” She tried to not grin at him being a fervent fanboy. Marissa would love that.

~~~~~~~~~~

Thirty minutes to go heading back south from dropping Lainie off with her mom and stepdad, and Lucy’s heart fluttered nervously. She’d stopped minimally, adding only about half an hour to the six and a half spent driving--a couple of brief potty breaks, filing her gas tank once, a few minutes with Lainie’s family, and gulping down McDonald’s for lunch.

Thirty minutes and her life would change forever, because today was the day. She’d finished her last class this morning, turning in her term paper for Culture and Communication, and she’d aced that. Though she might well get a B or even a C in Sociology, because a Monday/Wednesday/Friday 8 AM course was brutal, especially when she kept late hours like she was. It wasn’t like _good_ bands performed at 6 PM, and so she’d been in her share of crowded clubs and diva bars till midnight, 1 AM, 2 AM, sometimes going back to Marissa’s dorm room. Marissa’s supposed roommate, Janine, was more or less living off-campus with her boyfriend Ryan, so the two of them effectively had Marissa’s room to themselves all semester.

She felt the anxiety welling up within her, panic fierce and overwhelming--how was she going to explain that grade to her mom? She could imagine it: _I wanted you to go to UCLA, Lucy, so that nobody would say you had it handed to you by my being on the faculty, like they would at Stanford. But maybe you need closer supervision._

But then clarity pierced the bubble of anxiety. It wouldn’t matter if she got a B, a C, or even failed the class. She wasn’t going back, so who cared about the grade? How many times had she practiced it over the last weeks? _Mom, I know you’re going to not like this, but I’m twenty years old. You had me when you were twenty-two, and you were still in undergrad and Dad had just started grad school, so you can’t argue that I’m too young to decide my own life. I’m not going back to UCLA this fall. I’m going to be a singer, I’m starting a band with my girlfriend Marissa. Yes, Mom, I’m bisexual. Oh, and she’s half-Lakota._

Joan Jett came on the radio then, and she couldn’t help grinning at that. _I don’t give a damn about my reputation? Easier said than done, Joan Jett._ But there was something comforting in the fierce unapologetic girl power of it, and singing along while blasting the music helped. She’d made up her mind, and she was going to do it. Certainty of making her life her own filled her chest, making her feel invincible. Besides, it felt like a sign. It had been a Joan Jett cover band at Sully’s the night she and Marissa had their first date, first kiss.

This--this life was her mother’s plan. And she loved history, but she could love history and make music and live her own life, couldn’t she? People could adore history and not have to make that their livelihood. Carol Preston would have to understand. This wasn’t feudal Europe where she had to do a thing for a living just because it was in the family. It wasn’t like she’d been expected to follow in Henry Wallace’s footsteps and become a zoologist. Like by both her and Amy getting Mom’s surname, which she still secretly did think was pretty awesomely feminist of Dad, but like by being a Preston and not a Wallace, she’d become Carol’s Mini-Me somehow. 

Amy would think it was pretty much the best thing ever, given she was hitting her own teen rebellion phase. But it was her life, and she was going to live it. Dad would have agreed. She knew it. 

She looked down for just a moment to crank the volume up another notch, wanting to sing along at the top of her lungs, give herself even more courage. Now she’d be home in twenty minutes. She could do this. She could do this. She _would_ do this. Marissa had kissed her goodbye last night, talking already about going up the coast to Seattle, where her Aunt Debbie knew some of the right clubs, places where bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam and the Gits had gotten their start. Dark eyes alight, fingers gripping Lucy’s tightly, a grin showing that slight gap between her two front teeth that Lucy secretly adored. Both of them giddy with excitement, because this was really going to happen. 

“No, no, no, not me!” Then it felt like the car was grabbed by some merciless giant’s hand, thrown aside into a spin in the cloudy late afternoon haze, everything in a terrifying whirl. What had happened? What had she hit--oil on the road? Her faux-Joan Jett shriek turned into a genuine scream as she felt the guardrail give way like it was flimsy paper, felt her stomach drop at the Impala in free fall.

The jolt when it hit the water was like hitting concrete, and knocked the breath out of her. Joan Jett immediately died, along with the car lights. But the fact that the cold water started rushing in immediately, pooling around her ankles and rising swiftly, sent her heart racing in panic. Fumbling to undo her seatbelt with hands shaking so badly she could barely control them, she reached for the door, and threw all her weight against it. She might as well have been pushing at the granite slab of a whole mountain. _The pressure’s too great outside, I’ll never get it open before the car floods and I’m out of air...I can’t break the window…Oh God, fucking power windows!_

Sitting there, heart racing and trembling all over, she knew this had to be some kind of punishment for what she’d been about to do. _Drop out to join a band, Lucy? Seriously, how stupid are you? Like the world needs another bunch of wannabes playing terrible music for tips at a bar._ She could hear Carol’s disappointment. _You’d waste a first-class education and a bright mind to go live like a hobo? Maybe you’re not as smart as we think, Lucy._

The water was up past her waist now, cold and clammy, and she could smell the brackish, briny scent of it. The worst part of this was how long it felt like it was taking. She was likely going to die in San Francisco Bay. If she was going to die, having all this time to think about it was the worst. _Please...God, if I get through this, I swear I’ll stay in school, I’ll be good, I’ll be good, I’ll be good...Mom, I’m so sorry…Amy..._

Once it was at her shoulders, a surreal sense of calm started to take over. _OK. This is it. This is how I die. Well, at least I lived longer than some people did in the past. Didn’t die of cholera. That’s something, isn’t it?_ But at the back of her mind, there was one last whispered cry, _Please. God. I’ll do anything._

~~~~~~~~~~

They started the morning with lighthearted chat to pass the time, but as the afternoon wore on, and the spot on the hillside where they sat passed from sunshine into shadow, he began to ease off on the banter. Wonderful as it was to have time with her without anyone listening in, and without an immediate objective needing attention right that minute, he couldn’t forget they were there on a mission.

And this mission, of all missions. Yes, she trusted him with her life on most any mission they had. But this was different. He held her survival in his hands directly this time. There was a razor’s edge on missions like this, the gravity of it steadying him without paralyzing him into inaction with fear, and the drive pushing him to be decisive and succeed without shoving him into rash action. Good operatives learned to use that fine push-pull balance to help slice through the obstacles, like the best katana, but God, if things went wrong, with one stumble that keen edge could cut.

So much riding on this--not only the survival of Lucy’s younger self and her acknowledged existence, but making sure the Lifeline worked. He’d gotten her to agree to come here first, arguing that her drowning within minutes beat him bleeding out internally over hours in terms of priority. He wouldn’t say it, but Lucy’s survival would always matter more, both to the team as their historian and leader, and to him personally.

Checking her watch, she nodded, and they headed down the hill, towards the Wendy’s, milling around a dark garnet Jeep as if it was theirs, Lucy feigning talking on the phone. He’d observed it had been parked there for hours. Must have belonged to an employee. It was that or the Prius nearby, which would have been ridiculous.

Scanning the road, he saw it unfold as if in slow motion--the black Impala spun out, the screech of brakes as she tried to arrest the spin. It shattered the rail, and careened into the water with a splash. Too far away to hear, but he had to imagine the Lucy in that car screamed as it happened. 

He didn’t even look back at the Lucy by his side, checking for traffic in a split second so this wouldn’t end like a tragic game of Frogger for time travelers. Clear, and he sprinted across the multiple lanes, to the gap now in the rail. Throwing off the black leather jacket there, the one Denise had brought for him ten months ago when she sprung him out of prison, and he’d resisted the urge to make a crack of _New year resolution to be kinder to would-be allies in this fight, huh?_ The jacket would only be bulk and drag as he swam, and he’d need to give it to her anyway. Grabbing the remains of the rail, he swung himself down the small dropoff of the embankment, he bit back a hiss as a sharp edge of the twisted metal cut the edge of his hand, and landed a bit awkwardly, ankle almost rolling, but he saved the landing. No time to think about it. 

Scanning the bubbling, seething mass marking the escaping air from the sinking car, he didn’t dive in like an idiot. From the tidal charts, it was shallow here, as little as seven feet, definitely less than twenty. But for someone trapped in that car, panicking and drowning, it might as well have been a thousand. 

Deep breaths, hyperventilating a few times to fill his lungs with as much air as possible, and he dived under, the water cold, his jeans and t-shirt immediately clammy. Silt stirred up from the car crashing into the bottom filled the water in a dirty cloud, and his eyes burned from the salt in the brackish bay water. Searching frantically through the low visibility, going as much by feel and instinct as anything, he suddenly found a curve of metal. Lungs burning, he kicked for the surface, caught another breath again, and immediately plunged back down, having his bearings. He shut his eyes for a moment, against the sting of the salt and the disorientation of the near brown-out. Found the car again, and opening his eyes, he was close enough to see, even through the still-poor visibility, the shadowy form within the car pounding on the window.

He’d questioned her. Strong and fierce as ever in recounting details of her own near-death, he’d said she’d definitely gotten her belt off. But she just couldn’t get the door open yet because of the pressure differential, she had nothing in the car to break the window, and by the time it equalized from the car filling, she would have drowned in her panic. _Once more will do it. And I swear to God, Lucy, if we get through this war alive, you and I are learning to scuba dive, because that would have made all of this so much easier, and I’d rather have some pleasant memories of being underwater. Bet you would too._

One last dive, and landing on the bottom, he reached down, hand closing over a rock a bit bigger than his fist. Lucy herself, anthropologist extraordinaire, probably would have had some useful fact about how Stone Age cultures would have used something like this as a hammerstone in flint-knapping. Trapped by the wonder of modern technology, power windows and engine-driven vehicles, and all she really needed in that moment was a man holding a rock.

He hit the window himself a couple of times with his left hand in warning, hoping it would tell her to back off. Then he struck, and the window shattered. He reached it, grabbed her--no time for delicacy or grace--and she had enough presence of mind to help hoist herself out of the car. He swore he saw traces of blood in the water. His hand, or her being cut on broken glass, he wasn’t sure, but he had no time to think about it. Getting an arm firmly around her, he braced against the car and kicked up for the surface. 

Surfacing, gasping in a deep lungful of air, he knew Lucy must have been waiting across the street, wanting to rush over and help, but too many potential witnesses, too many questions. So he got her to the shore, then staggered to his feet, carrying her up the embankment and putting her down gently on the shoulder of the road. Both of them wet and muddy, and he could see the rivulets of blood welling up in a cut on her right forearm, the hand she’d reached out to her rescuer. He’d seen that scar on a fifteen-years-older Lucy. She’d never explained it. Coughing, grabbing a handkerchief from his jeans pocket as soaked as both of them, he tied it around her arm with fingers suddenly shaking with unsteadiness as the adrenaline wore off.

Kneeling there, gravel digging into his knees through the denim of his jeans, he looked at her, seeing beyond the mud. Even smaller than the woman he knew, or maybe it was her youth, the softness of her features, her unlined skin, her helplessness right now. She was so young, hair cut in a short blunt bob, wearing a Gits t-shirt. His Lucy, the one waiting for him probably still only a couple hundred yards away, he wanted to take to bed all night long. This one? Young and scared and still so fragile--he wanted to wrap her in a blanket, feed her a sandwich, and tell her it would all be OK. He wanted to keep her from a future where she would hurt so much, lose so much, suffer so much. It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her to run away with Marissa, to start that band, to live her life and make stupid mistakes and be happy. Maybe it had to be that way, but looking at her now and knowing what was in store for her in thirteen, fourteen, fifteen years, it hurt so damn badly to coolly abandon her to ignorance and blindly accepting that fate. In some ways, it felt like one of the worst things he’d done. But he knew the woman she’d become, the hard necessities she’d accept, and how she wouldn’t blame him for this. 

She looked up at him with bleary eyes, rasping out, “How…”

No hard task to be gentle with her, this woman who’d grow up to be the tigress he’d fight alongside and come to love. “Take it easy,” he told her. “I saw it. Your car spun out. I think you hit an oil slick. Looks like you hyperventilated, had a shallow water blackout.” He reached for the jacket, laid it over her carefully, reaching into the pocket to snag his NSA badge, which he’d apparently also need. “Sorry I’m dripping on you. Though you’re already all wet, I suppose, so…” 

She wheezed out a laugh at that, coughing and sputtering, and he turned her onto her side in case she’d inhaled any water that she needed to vomit out, tucking the jacket around her again. She stirred restlessly, trying to look up at him, eyes still not focusing properly. “Who--”

“Just rest, Lu--just rest,” he coaxed her. He caught himself almost having said her name, helplessly moved to it by the sight of her, the need to try to comfort her. He allowed himself a brief reassuring pat on the shoulder, something that wouldn’t be creepy from the random stranger who’d dived in to pull her from her car. “Deep breaths, slowly. You’ll be OK.” 

“Thank you,” she managed between chattering teeth, whether from cold or shock or both, he couldn’t be sure.

He got to his feet slowly, lightheaded, flagging down the next car, a violently purple Dodge Neon. A woman got out, and still trying to slow his own racing heart, he looked at her. “The girl there skidded out and went into the bay. I was headed the other way, but I parked, got across the highway, pulled her out.” He tiredly flashed his credentials. “I’m an NSA agent and I’ve still got to get cross-bay to Alameda in a hurry--I can’t give you details, but I _need_ to be there as soon as possible. I can’t wait with her. Please, ma’am. Can you call the ambulance and wait with her?” 

She looked at him, dripping and exhausted and muddy, and at Lucy lying there on the asphalt, huddled in on herself. She reached into her purse and pulled out her cell phone, a chunky, blocky model like they’d had in the early aughts. “Then go do your job, sir, and I’ll be doing mine. I’m a nurse. I’ve got this.”

“Thank you,” he told her, and crossed back over the street, finding enough second wind to make it, and then scramble up the hill behind Lucy once they’d moved down road enough from the Wendy’s to be out of sight. He heard the ambulance sirens as they crested the hill, but didn’t have the energy in that moment to look back. Just kept putting one foot in front of the other, ignoring the disgusting squelch of wet socks and wet sneakers, until they reached the Lifeboat. Then he turned around and looked at the scene in the distance, the ambulance there, the nurse with her purple Neon still there with young Lucy.

Lucy glanced down at the scene herself. “I’ll be fine. Overnight hospital stay, scared straight, and Mom being super nice to me for the whole summer. Amy, of course, complimenting the scar.” She raised her arm and tapped the angry purple keloid hear her right elbow. He managed a smile at that.

She looked at him, reaching out and taking hold of him by the arms. “Let’s get you changed into something dry.” They’d wryly agreed him dripping water all over the Lifeboat interior, given all the shiny blinky electronics, likely wasn’t the best idea. He had a pack with dry clothes waiting, once Lucy uncloaked the Lifeboat.

“Given I’ve gotta change everything, gonna take the chance to steal a peek?” he quipped, raking the wet hair back from his eyes again.

She gave a half-smile. “I’ll wait.” The smile widened a bit, turned into something knowing and a bit sassy. “Give me something to look forward to, right?” He felt himself blushing at that, even more than if she’d brazenly said yes, she meant to take the opportunity. Maybe glad she wasn’t, because he was tired and much as the idea of Lucy looking at him and enjoying it did certain things to him, this wouldn’t be the best moment.

He nodded at that. The smile disappeared, and she stepped closer, grip on his arms tightening, not embracing him in all his damp, muddy glory because she didn’t have spare clean clothes herself, but stopping just short. “ _Hvala_ ,” she said, looking up at him, and the look in her dark eyes did something to him, looking at him with that sort of quiet admiration and trust. She’d been a scared girl who he’d pulled from the water, but the woman she’d become was someone truly special.

“ _Molim_ ,” he answered her softly, wanting to stay there in that moment, that gaze, for far longer than he could allow. “Let me get changed and let’s get back, make sure the Lifeline doesn’t corkscrew things and create the United Territories of Canmerica or something.”

She nodded, stepping back and letting him go, though he could see it was only with reluctance. “We’ve got a busy day in Chechnya tomorrow if not.”

~~~~~~~~~~

He pulled her from the water. He was there, and then he was gone, a dark figure in the glare of the late afternoon sun, and he looked tall, but she couldn’t see clearly, her vision still swimming with dark spots.

Then another shadow fell over her, and a woman’s voice, sweet and dark as honey, said, “All right, honey, you’ve had a heck of a day” She felt the weight of a blanket draped over her. “My name is Denee Yardley, and I’m a nurse. The man asked me to call the ambulance, and to look after you. He apparently had to go--federal agent, FBI? Active investigation, time critical, whatever. But I’ll stay with you. Don’t try to move, though. You almost drowned, plus you have some lacerations from the broken glass from your car window. Is there anyone else you need me to call?”

She managed a few deep gulping breaths, her mind finally settling down somewhat, keeping her eyes shut against the too-bright lights. “Call my mom. Carol Preston. 510-555-1945. My name is Lucy.” 

But she clutched his black jacket around herself, holding on to it tight, breathing in the scent of leather and some kind of soap. She wouldn’t let it go in the ambulance, and even her mother gave up when she insisted on keeping it when she got out of the hospital. She hid it in the back of her closet so it wouldn’t go away in one of Mom’s charity purges. One rainy day in July she slipped it on. It was huge on her, sized for a man at least six feet tall, the sleeves coming down past her fingertips. The scent of him was already somewhat faded. But she felt strangely comforted to wear it, to remember that day. About the worst thing that had happened was the claustrophobia, and the occasional nightmare of drowning. But she knew she was meant to stick with history, and she and Marissa turned out OK in the end, even without the band, even after breaking up. _He saved me, and he didn’t even know my name._

~~~~~~~~~~

The second Lifeline jump was as bad as the first, maybe even worse thanks to the sensation like a lingering hangover. Jiya and Lucy definitely had that after St. Petersburg given Lousiana to Latvia to Massachusetts to Latvia to St. Petersburg to Louisiana all in the space of less than forty-eight hours, and they’d reported the Lifeboat kicked harder on jumps with a short chronological difference.

Sitting in the Lifeboat, with about two hours before showtime, Lucy cracked the cap on a water bottle, and winced. “Do you have the worst headache ever?”

“Yeah,” he admitted, rubbing his temples. “It was one hell of a bronco ride. I’m guessing it’s because it slingshotted us such a short way--was the trip to 1981 bad?”

“It was,” she replied, looking surprised that she recognized it now. “So was the trip from Latvia to Cambridge and back--that was only five months of difference.”

“Shortened distance, increased force,” he said, flippantly. “Physics! Mom would be so proud of me.” He looked over at her, saying carefully, “She’d like to meet you, you know.” He’d seen her delight in him saying he was with someone. She’d never had that before. Gabriel had died as a child, and even here, he was decidedly single--he wasn’t sure whether that was a lingering vestige of getting most of the way through Catholic seminary before quitting to become an architect. In his timeline, Maria Flynn had died when he was twenty-six, before he could tell her about Danil, and before he met Lorena, and in this timeline, she’d heard about Danil, but it had been so long since then, she’d probably given up hope.

“You told your mom about me.”

He looked at her, baffled. “Was I not supposed to? I mean, obviously Ethan knows about me--” 

“Ethan knows about you because he met you in 1954! Both timelines, in fact.”

“You said he asked me to dinner next time we were in the Bay Area.”

She gave a guilty smile. “OK, so he might have asked about you, and I might have admitted…”

“Ha!” He pointed a finger at her. “So I’m not your dirty little secret.” He said it flippantly, but she flinched at it, and he realized with a pang of guilt that maybe he’d meant it half-seriously.

She looked at him with that disarmingly direct stare of hers. “You’re not, Garcia,” she said it gently, but it hit him with the force of a hurricane. “A year ago, yeah, you maybe would have.” He had to respect that she cared enough to be honest. “But you’re not that person anymore.”

He nodded, accepting that carefully, trying to make it fit. Her grandfather was probably the closest she had to family at this point, that and her half-sister and the tenuous bridge they were apparently building. It was easier for him with Gabriel, accepting his half-brother’s survival as a gift, especially given he’d saved Gabe’s life. It came slowly all the same, given the years of brotherhood he’d never experienced stood as a gulf between them still. But he didn’t have Lucy’s issue of mourning a beloved half-sister lost, and now having another one there she’d never met. “I mean, does Amy…”

“Ellie’s not Amy. And sometimes that’s easy, and sometimes that’s hard.” Another of those looks. “I guess I could compare it to you having another daughter, and trying to not make her into Iris while you’re still reminded of what you lost.”

He felt like he couldn’t breathe, sensing what she was really asking in oblique fashion. And yes, part of being together and talking about a future meant answering the big question about whether or not kids were in the equation. _I don’t know, Lucy. I don’t. And I can’t have this conversation right now._ Lorena was a burden he shouldered with greater ease these days, but she was easier. She was happy, living her life. Iris--his baby. Still gone, lost forever, and losing a wife was terrible, but losing a child cut even deeper. He and Lorena had always known it was a toss-up, as all couples did, as to who would go first. Iris dying before him still felt so unfair, so unnatural. Besides, with Lucy he’d had to face losing Lorena. Losing Iris...no, he couldn’t crack that Pandora’s box open, dig it all out and face it squarely. He could only look at it from the corner of his eye occasionally if he hoped to carry on and keep fighting, and this war needed everything he could give. He already had no idea how he’d deal with Wyatt and Jessica’s daughter if and when Jessica did detach herself from Rittenhouse. 

Steadying himself with a hand on the armrest of the Lifeboat seat, he pushed up to his feet. “Let’s scope it out and get ready.”

She looked at him for a long moment, accepting his dodging the issue, and nodded. _For now_ , something in her expression warned. 

Hopping out of the Lifeboat, he reached up to help her down, looking at the scrubby bushes and steeply-cut river channels of the Caucasus Mountains. Huddled down deeper into his jacket in the crisp November mountain air--the black leather one Lucy had kept in her closet in San Francisco for years, the one he’d given to her fifteen years ago. A bit more weathered, but it still suited. He slung the M-1 across his back by its carrying strap. Lucy put her pistol in her jacket pocket. She’d take point on this, and he’d stay back, but he’d damn well cover her in case. He well remembered these mountains, and right now it might be quiet, but given missiles, bombs, and skirmishes happened often enough, he was taking no chances. “We’re lucky. Normally my directions would be ‘a gully a bit west of Ulus-Kert along a stream off the Argun River, good luck finding it, hope we have all day’. But I ended back there four and a half years later when the Russians took Grozny, and we retreated south, into the mountains. We were so nearby that I had to go looking. I found what I was positive was the same spot then in 2000. Shouldn’t be a problem to find it now.”

_Six months he’d been back in Chechnya, and he wondered if he imagined the looks Danil gave him sometimes, the edge to that smile that seemed like so much more than brotherhood. More than their reuniting after three years apart. Garcia crouched by that stream, Nitro--named as a joking nod to his faithful Dynamite he’d had to leave behind him in 1996--grazing peacefully nearby. Staring at the peaceful trickle of the water, no sign of a missile exploding nearby except a shattered rock on the opposite bank that might well be it. But it had been here. He felt it, deep in his bones._

_He’d heard the footsteps and looked over his shoulder, seen Danil there with a gentle look on his face, compassion in his amber-brown eyes. Danil had followed him, found him, known why he had to come here, facing the spot where he’d nearly died. They were older now, and he’d been in other places, other wars, faced other dangers. But that bond was still there. And he’d left Chechnya the first time without a word spoken, but he’d ended up here again and it felt like fate, didn’t it? How could he walk away a second time?_

_Before he could think better of it, he’d gotten to his feet, crossed the six steps between them, and kissed Danil. Raw and clumsy, almost missing in his haste, because he was twenty-five, had never kissed anyone, and his heart pounded with terror from the awkwardness of inexperience and not knowing if Danil felt the same. There was a deeper dread beneath that. Danil’s faith in Islam wasn’t of the ironbound, harshest type, but everyone had their sticking points. He was a halfhearted Catholic at best, but he’d wrestled with this for years himself, with the notion of sin, of there being something wrong. If he misjudged this, misjudged the man too, Danil might actually kill him where he stood, or report him to be dealt with harshly. But Danil was the only person he’d loved like this in his life, so he had to know._

_When Danil said “Miha”, only his name, and his hands gripped Garcia’s jacket to keep him closer rather than roughly shove him away, he could have wept in gratitude._

It was only a few hundred yards on foot. He hoped like hell the Russians hadn’t fired more missiles right by here after the one that injured him, because the Lifeboat might be a sitting duck if so. 

They found the spot, and for the third time in his life, he crouched there, staring at that same peaceful stream. The place where he’d had his first near-death experience and his first kiss and apparently his first encounter with Lucy Preston, and if that Goddamn strange mix didn’t seem to succinctly summarize the tone his life had taken these days, risk and love and fate all braided together so tightly, he really didn’t know what would. 

He saw the shadow falling over him, sensed Lucy behind him, standing over him. “So I get you to the camp--”

“Two miles that way,” he gestured to the west. “Opposite direction of the village.”

“Pop the journal in your backpack, hand you over to Danil from there.”

“Exactly. He’ll get me to Grozny, and to the hospital there.”

She crouched down beside him, a lock of hair coming loose from her braid, surveying the terrain with a shrewd glance. Yes, she’d definitely changed in the last six months. “What’s he like?”

“Then or now?” He shook his head. “Though ‘then’ is 2018 technically--time travel, right?”

“No, I guess what I mean is...what happened to him? You don’t fall for someone easily. I get that.” She shot him a shy sidelong glance at that. “So it seems like you don’t walk away easily either, and you’ve never mentioned...I mean, I know he wasn’t killed, but you never talk about how it ended.”

He couldn’t help but laugh. “No, Danil’s not dead.” Though he sobered a little at the thought. Losing Lorena was bad enough. If he’d lost Danil before that, two dead lovers really would be a glaring neon sign to not risk a third. “We--it was timing. We finally got together during the Second Chechen War, but we had to hide it for most of the year and a half that we were together there.” Two gay men--he’d believed he was gay them, only realized he was bisexual later when Lorena came along--too much risk at the time. Not that being in America or anywhere else would have been that much better.

“You told me that, I remember.”

“Then I left Chechnya after 9/11 to go to Afghanistan. Started to go more mainstream with American security contractors rather than being a guerilla fighter. That’s how I eventually ended up attached to the NSA. Around then, he fled Chechnya for Berlin because of the persecution of homosexuals. He’s actually a pastry chef now.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“Right hand to God, or Allah. We got together a few times there when I was on leave there, but--we began in secret, we got together so rarely, so it was more like a series of moments than being able to enjoy a full relationship. Then our lives were on separate paths. We finally called it quits in 2003 after one last week together, decided to stay friends, right before I headed off for Iraq. He met his husband, Bernhard--Bern--the next year, when Bern became a sous chef at the same restaurant.” He and Bern hit it off surprisingly well, probably because Bern knew he was no threat to his relationship with Danil, and Garcia didn’t resent Danil’s happiness with someone else. He’d been worried for a little while, though. “I think he and Danil enjoyed rolling their eyes in horror over my romantic hopelessness until Lorena came along.” He couldn’t help but grin wryly. “It must be so much worse here with me apparently not having had anyone since him. When they hear about you, I’m going to get so much shit from both of them.”

She snorted with laughter at that. “Don’t worry, I’ll defend you.”

“I know.” She always did, challenged him when he needed it, and how he’d been lucky enough to have someone like her choose to see that in him, he’d never know. “On the bright side, they’ll insist on feeding us dinner, so there’s that.” He gave a sheepish shrug.

~~~~~~~~~~

Rough as the guerilla life was, this seemed almost strangely calm after the frenzy of the spring and summer. Reclaiming territory between Zagreb and Slavonia in the east, and then the massive push of Operation Storm in August, _Operacija Oluja_ , virtually steamrollering the last of the Bosnian Serbian resistance out of Croatia. Four days of furious fighting across hundreds of miles of battlefront, a hundred thousand troops, the biggest land battle since World War Two, they’d said. All noise and confusion, like being swallowed by a tidal wave of war. Nothing but a few scratches and bruises to show for it on his part.

The word came that the battle was over late on the 8th. He’d been in Knin, and the city erupted. People in the streets singing, drinking, shouting, cheering, weeping. They’d done it. The formalities would still need to take place, and a few places like Vukovar had remained to be retaken, but they all knew they’d done it. They’d broken the back of the Serbs. Croatia would be free. Their land, their home, would now be its own country, decide its own fate.

He’d stood there in Knin, watching a red, white, and blue flag flying in a hot summer twilight, a flag they’d defiantly raised when they took the city, wondered if this was how the Americans had felt in Yorktown over two hundred years before. His mother told him plenty of American history growing up, and in some ways it had been so much easier to identify with Maria Flynn and her proud, unabashed Americanness than Asher Flynn and the complicated cultural and political maze that was post-Tito Yugoslavia.

He’d fallen in with Domagoj and the militia as much to escape home as anything after slugging his father, but in the war he’d fought alongside so many people who’d taught him to feel pride again in Croatia, in his being Croatian. That was a gift.

He stood in Knin under that flag and looked southwest. He could go home to Split, less than two hours away. Take the exams, get his _Matura_ , go to university. Everyone’s plans had been screwed by the war, and even without that he would have done a year of mandatory service in the Yugoslav Army, so it wasn’t like at twenty he was behind.

The things he’d seen, though. The things he’d done. War and all its horrors had rolled across the region for four years. Even those not formally in the army or informally fighting as partisans had been caught up in the war and the terror of it. There were no sheltered bystanders. Homes bombed and shelled for weeks or months, watching fighting in the streets. Bosniak men and boys shot, the women and girls herded off to rape camps. Buildings and cities and lives and families in ruins, in ashes. The children of Croatia had all become children of war. Could he really go back to a classroom, sitting there studying history, like none of it had been real? Besides, there were other people out there still fighting to be free. He was good at fighting, if nothing else. Maybe that was his calling. 

He’d called his mom to tell her he was OK, but not coming home just yet. She’d sighed lowly, told him, “Please, please be safe. Call me when you can.” She’d lost Gabriel, lost her first husband, and even Asher had killed himself last year. He was all she had left, and she must have thanked God he’d survived the war, assumed that was it. He felt a pang of guilt about not going home, about not giving her that bit of comfort when she’d had so little comfort in her life. But he couldn’t make it all fit, couldn’t make peace within himself yet. He couldn’t go home and be the son she deserved.

So he bought a bus ticket, found his way to Chechnya where they’d been fighting the Russians to break away as an independent nation for almost a year already. Found this group of rebels. Communication had been weird for a little while, since none of them spoke either Croatian or English, though his admittedly imperfect high school Russian helped. He was learning Chechen, and the geography and the culture were new, but the faith wasn’t. He’d had Muslim neighbors in Split, fought with Bosniak Muslims throughout the war. It also helped that they rapidly understood he’d come there straight from four and a half years of war in Croatia. He was no stranger to sleeping rough, fighting guerilla skirmishes, and using lousy, outdated weapons.

Pausing at the stream, he got off Dynamite’s back, giving the chestnut mare a fond pat on her white-striped nose. Being a horseback soldier was new, admittedly. They’d laughed their asses off at his clumsiness at riding during his first week here in the mountains, how he gingerly limped his way to the evening fire thanks to a saddle-sore ass and thighs. It was Danilbek who had taken pity on him and helped teach him to ride, to care for a horse. It was Danil who’d become his first real friend here in Chechnya, who swapped Chechen and guitar lessons for lessons in Croatian and English. The two of them ended up talking late into the night sometimes until someone would scream in annoyance for them to shut the hell up already, and they’d look at each other and crack up, heading to bed with a sheepish wave. But “Mihajlo” had become accepted all the same. He wouldn’t go by his actual American first name here, as he hadn’t during the war in Croatia either. Too complicated. Too many questions. Easier to go by his Slavic middle name.

Crouching to drink upstream of Dynamite who was doing the same, thristily gulping down the clear, cold water, he glanced ahead, towards Ulus-Kert. They’d been through two weeks before, and he knew there were supporters here where he could probably find food to bring back to camp. They were out of money to buy it right now, so they’d have to politely ask or beg. His Chechen was decent enough at this point to ask, and they’d seen him there a few weeks before besides, knew he rode with this particular group of rebels. For well or ill, he was tall enough to be easily seen and remembered, and the minute he opened his mouth and they heard his half-broken Chechen, he became even more memorable.

Dynamite nickered uneasily, flicking her ears forward, and he glanced over at her, getting to his feet and smoothly pulling the rifle strap from over his shoulder, rapidly scanning the area. Stuck in the bottom of this small gully, he was a sitting duck, and so he kept to a crouch, heading for Dynamite to get in the saddle and ride like hell. He’d barely taken two steps when he heard the familiar whistle in his ears. So it wasn’t someone that she’d heard, but something. He had barely enough time to think _Jebote_ , and then the explosion came and things went black.

~~~~~~~~~~

She instinctively ducked behind a tree at the explosion, and heard the horse--Dynamite, _of course_ he’d named his horse Dynamite--whinny anxiously, but the mare didn’t run, because she didn’t hear the drumming hoofbeats of her galloping away. Shooting Garcia a quick glance, he nodded. He had her covered if there was anyone there.

Still, her heart was in her throat as she hurried towards the lip of the gully where she’d seen the tall figure vanish a few minutes before, leading the horse down a small slope to the stream. She saw the blackened, cracked and burned boulder where the missile must have hit, smelled the scent of scorched stone and earth and grass, and something acrid she couldn’t quite place. Skidding down the slope herself, setting off a slide of tan earth beneath her feet, she half-hopped, half-stumbled her way to a halt.

No, Dynamite hadn’t run. She stood there beside the figure awkwardly lying there partway into the shallow stream, pawing at the ground, looking at Lucy with what she would almost term anxiety. Whatever exact intelligence horses had, obviously this was her person, and she was concerned. “I’ll get him,” she told Dynamite. “Just--just don’t run off?” Did she need to tie the reins to something to make sure that didn’t happen?

Garcia coughed, muttered, “Mom?” in English, obviously hearing her speaking the same language. She dropped to her knees beside him, eyes first on the red stain the size of her fist on his ragged olive jacket. Not much she could do for it here aside from grab some clean cloth from her own pack, briskly shove his hands aside as he tried to fumble with her, obviously confused, and stuff it over the wound. It struck her with the oddest irreverence that she’d never even seen Garcia shirtless, and here she was yanking up his shirt in these circumstances. 

“Can you sit up?” She got an arm around his shoulders, got him halfway up, and managed to quickly bandage her crude dressing in place. It would do. She eyed his backpack, soaked as he’d said from being knocked into the stream on his back. Reaching into her own pack again, she grabbed the packet wrapped in two layers of plastic, popping open the top of his pack, and shoving it in, trying to not make a face as she touched clammy, soggy fabric, and redid the zipper.

Task done, sitting there on her haunches, she looked him over. Sitting there on the muddy stream bank, he had the dazed, unfocused look that told her yes, he very definitely had a concussion. He wasn’t kidding when he told her that he remembered nothing after the explosion until he woke up in the hospital.

He was so painfully young as he sat there, looking at her but obviously not really seeing her, skin smooth and unlined, hair unkempt and longer than she’d ever seen it, only a bit of stubble whereas Garcia, her Garcia, probably could manage five o’clock shadow by two. There was something coltish and half-finished to him, limbs too long as that tall frame hadn’t fully filled out yet into the familiar broad build she knew. Twenty years old, already at war for four years, and if she hadn’t come along to save him, he would have died here in a Chechen stream. She wanted to send him home to his mom. She wanted to bark at him to go to college and do stupid things and get drunk and cut class, and generally take that damn weight of excessive responsibility from his shoulders that had been there before he was even old enough to realize what it meant.

Breathing in through her nose, exhaling through her mouth, she forced herself past all that. She’d just given him that journal so he’d stay the course, because he had to do it. He needed to stick with this now at twenty, at thirty, at forty, so that in 2016 he would be there to fight Rittenhouse. But it had never hit her so clearly until that moment, looking at him, looking at her younger self yesterday huddled in a wet and terrified heap on the shoulder of the highway, exactly how much the fight had taken from them long before they ever saw a time machine or heard the name _Rittenhouse_. All those possible futures, the might-have-beens, gone and dissipated into the wind. She was where she needed to be, and all things considered, she had friends, she had a man she loved fiercely, and that wasn’t a bad thing. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t take a moment to soberly see the big picture.

Slowly, carefully, she managed to get him to his feet, wobbly as anything. He leaned over and threw up from the concussion, and she risked patting him on the back in reassurance at that.

“Don’t worry, ma’am, I have nothing to puke,” he said, giving her a dazed, dimpled smile. His Croatian accent was so much thicker now, like she heard it from him when he was tired. He must have worked on eliminating much of it--probably when he started working with Americans a lot more in the Middle East. _God, Garcia, awkward jokes were a thing with you even then, I see._ Somehow the amusement and exasperation helped, making a bulwark against the fear.

She sighed, urging him towards the horse, helping him climb on. Good thing, because she couldn’t deadlift a hundred and seventy pounds or so onto the horse. Eyeing how he swayed in the saddle, she mounted up behind him, getting her left arm around him around his waist, below the bandages, to secure him. Grabbing the reins in her right hand, she awkwardly leaned aside a bit, peeking out around his right shoulder. She couldn’t ride in front of him and trust him to hold on with as badly concussed as he was, and bleeding internally also, so this was the best she could do. 

She glanced towards the treeline, towards where Garcia waited, and gave him a wave of _I’ve got this_. She would have to handle this by herself. She could do this. 

He’d given her directions, which was good, because honestly, she wasn’t sure she trusted young Garcia to know exactly where he was, let alone orient himself enough to direct them to the rebel camp. It was slow going, awkwardly balanced, in a completely unfamiliar place, adjusting her grip on him now and again, and conscious the whole while of the clock slowly ticking down on him. She looked down at one point to see a trickle of blood oozing down Dynamite’s flank, and she wasn’t sure whether that was from the gut wound or the various other cuts he had. She suppressed a shudder, nudging the mare with her heels to move a little faster. 

He mumbled things now and again, resorting to Croatian, and her grasp of the language wasn’t great to begin. With his words increasingly slurred, and her focus on the path and the horse, she couldn’t pay that much attention. But he apologized, promised her he’d call soon, told her he would be fine, it was just a scratch, and her heart broke at that. “I swear to God, Garcia,” she muttered against his back, “you’d damn well better call your mother.” She shook his shoulder, trying to keep him awake thanks to the concussion.

When they finally got to the camp, thankfully, they didn’t waste too much time with questions. Another young man rushed up, lean and tall and long-faced, a bloody bandage wrapped around his left forearm, looking at Garcia anxiously. “Miha?” He reached out and brushed his fingertips over the blood on Dynamite’s flank, looking up at Lucy. So this was Danil, the future pastry chef, current rebel fighter, and for a moment she could see the unguarded worry and fear in those hawk-brown eyes. She couldn’t speak Chechen, but she nodded, knowing he wouldn’t understand the gesture, but moved to do it all the same. _I know how you feel. God, do I ever._ She’d felt it coming back from Chinatown, seeing how badly he was hurt. 

Getting off Dynamite, she explained lamely, “American,” and made the gesture for taking pictures and writing something, trying to indicate that she was a reporter. 

“ _Ha’, dzhurnalist_ ,” he answered, nodding in reply. _Yeah, yeah, I get it._

She tried to not smile in nervous reflex at hearing the word, obvious in its translation, thinking of the plastic-wrapped package safe in that backpack. _Journalist. You have no idea how exactly right you are._

He held her gaze for a moment longer, studying her intently, and then something in his expression relaxed. “ _Barkahl_.” Then he only had eyes for Garcia, and he snapped something to the others milling around staring at the injured man, and she picked up only “Miha” and “Grozny”.

She slipped away then back into the trees, all of them focused on the injured man, before they could hold her and ask more questions. From a safe distance, she looked back and saw Danil hopping on another horse, Garcia held in front of him. It was out of her hands now. She’d done what she could, and she’d trust in the boy--the man--who obviously cared far more than he could admit right now. _We both saved him._

Picking her way back towards the Lifeboat, the two mile walk took close to an hour, given the rough mountainous terrain. She kept her pistol clutched in her hand. He’d warned her that there were more dangerous in the Caucasus Mountains right now than him dying at twenty years old. But she made it back, found that stepwise giant granite hunk like some kind of geological Tetris piece, where the cloaked Lifeboat and Garcia both waited for her.

She needed to touch him, hold him, after that, and she walked into his arms without hesitation. “I’ll be fine, Lucy,” he told her, glib humor intact. “A few weeks of not really being able to eat solids, and being annoyed at bed rest. Plus I’ve got a really nice scar that you’re more than welcome to see--presumably in the near future.”

She managed a watery laugh at that. “So, uh, heads up. I think when I meet him, your ex-boyfriend is going to recognize me after this.”

“Oh good, so not only thanks to altered timeline do I get to tell Danil for the second time that I’m bi and I’ve met a woman I intend to marry, I get to explain that we both time travel.” His eyes sparkled with gleeful mischief. “Should be fun.”

 _Did I hear you right?_ She pushed back from him, though she caught his forearms, unwilling to totally let him go, looking up into his eyes. “Run that last bit by me again?”

His overly dramatic look of bafflement covered the flash of awkward fear in his eyes. “Time travel? That little thing we do on a regular basis? Fight the good fight, kick some Rittenhouse ass?”

“No, before that.” Maybe she should let him off the hook, but her heart pounded faster again in a way that had nothing to do with fear for his younger self, her knees suddenly unsteady. 

He wet his lips. “Lucy…” He ducked his head, oddly bashful, or ashamed. Knowing him, probably both. “Well. That really wasn’t how I intended that to go.”

“But you meant it.” He still hesitated, avoiding her eyes, and she didn’t know if that was him ducking what he’d said from insincerity or just awkwardness. “Garcia. Don’t joke with me. Not about this.” She couldn’t take that again, hoping and being left to crash and burn. “If you meant it...”

“Of course I meant it.” He had another of those hesitant, vulnerable looks in his eyes. “I wouldn’t joke. Not about that. I shouldn’t have said anything. I--I never wanted to hurt you.”

The man had made up his mind, as decisive and stubborn as ever, that she was it. Some part of her was yelling in ecstasy from it, as another part of her tried to spiral out with anxiety. She’d kissed him only a few weeks ago, they’d both agreed to continue taking it slow, and here he’d tipped his hand. He’d surged ahead with the force of a raging river, wanted to marry her. What was she supposed to do with that? It wasn’t that she didn’t want that, she’d said she wanted him, wanted to be with him, wanted to plan and dream about a future with him. It was that here that was, cards on the table, right _now_ , and she hadn’t had time to work through all of it herself. It caught her so off guard, and she couldn’t bear to hurt him, but it was all so sudden. She’d come back to 2016 and ended up engaged to a man she didn’t know, and he was no Noah, she knew him, but that had happened so fast, and this was too fast too.

Too sudden, and she hated herself for it, tried to be as gentle as she could in probably breaking his heart when he’d finally opened it to her so cautiously, let her see something truly beautiful in him. “Garcia.” She licked her suddenly dry lips. “I love you, and you wanting that is...I can’t tell you how much that means. I just need time, I’m sor--”

He held up a hand, nodding, cutting her off. “It’s fine, Lucy. There’s no need to apologize.” He managed a smile. “I keep telling you--you’re worth the wait.” With that he stepped forward, slipping his arms around her again, holding her close. The relief of him not being angry washed over her. “Let’s head home. Give them the good news--we’re ready to go get Rufus back.”

~~~~~~~~~~

Danil had left a few minutes ago, and Garcia missed him already, though the mingled fear and wonder coursed through him at finally recognizing what he felt for the man. How the hell he was going to live with that, because chances were Danil didn’t return the sentiment, and it wasn’t like there was any way for them to have anything together anyway.

He sighed, needing to chase that from his mind. Though the thought of rereading “War and Peace” or “A Farewell to Arms” yet again made him want to retch, and it wasn’t only his slowly-mending guts or the atrocious hospital food that would cause it. 

The nurses had said one of his notebooks had made it through, when most of his reading and writing stuff got ruined in the stream. Hopefully it was his notebook with notes on the Chechen language in it. Even if it wasn’t, he probably should repurpose that notebook for it, and keep up with that. Ask the hospital staff for more words, better grammar, and the like. If he was stuck here for a few more weeks, he might as well come out of this speaking more intelligibly than when he came in, and gain something by the forced convalescence. He also should call Mom, but he’d prefer that wait a few more days. He was too tired for that conversation right now, and admitting he’d almost gotten killed in the mountains Maybe he should just tell her he was in Grozny. He was alive, he’d be fine. No cause to make her worry more than she already did, right?

Though when he turned awkwardly on his side, snagging the rucksack with its obvious water stains on the canvas, and dug, it wasn’t his notebook that he grabbed. Furrowing his brow at the plastic-wrapped bundle, he eyed it cautiously. What was this, and why was it there? Obviously someone stuffed it in there, and wanted it protected from the elements. Danil?

He carefully peeled up the tape, and unwrapped the layers of plastic. It was a notebook, or a journal. Fancy, black leather, with leather ties, with monogrammed gold initials--LP. 

Undoing the ties, he pulled out two sheets of paper from where they had been tucked in right between the front cover and the first page. 

Unfolding what was some kind of note or letter in unfamiliar handwriting, his breath caught. _Dear Garcia_. Nobody in Chechnya knew that name, and they certainly wouldn’t be writing it in English. _Yes, I know your name, Garcia Mihajlo Flynn. I also know your father’s dead. You wanted to be a history teacher. The horse you were riding in the mountains is named Dynamite, for Tex Willer’s horse. You’ll tell me all these things, someday, and a lot more. I know it’s hard to believe, but the things you’ll do in the future, the man you’ll be, will matter a lot more than you can imagine._

He couldn’t help it, keeping on reading, and when the letter was done, he tucked it back in its place, and started rifling through that impossible journal. He read it three times in a row, trying to understand this woman who hadn’t even told him her name, but promised that they’d do great things together, that they’d be partners, that the fight coming in 20 years--2016, _jebote_ , that seemed crazy and so far away--would be the one that needed him the most. She told him so much about history, about this weird “Rittenhouse” cult that apparently had a stranglehold on America, and even a few things about herself, but never her name, her profession, anything that would let him find out who she actually was. _Who are you, and what is this really all about? Guess I’ll have to wait and see._


	26. 3x07: Gold Mountain (Rufus/Jiya, Hells Canyon, Oregon, May 1887)

They set out from Bear Creek with the last of the rising sun at their backs. Rufus glanced back over his shoulder only once at the three-street collection of canvas tents, shacks, and a few ramshackle buildings--saloon, general store, gunsmith, stable. A jumping off point for the mining camps, Lucy had informed them, so horses were in good supply. “Hey, we stole clothes, got horses, got weapons, didn’t get shot or hanged. Next it’ll be eating cold canned beans in the saddle. So Red Dead Redemption 2 won’t be out for, what, five months? But guess I’m ready to live that simulated outlaw cowboy life, given I’m living it in reality.”

Settling into a steady trot, he couldn’t help but be thankful he’d learned horse riding and swimming rather than beading and archery at Camp Bright Horizons. He’d spent a month there the summer he was eleven, taking advantage of a summer camp for underprivileged Hyde Park kids from the South Side of Chicago. Learning to care for a horse, feed it, shovel the manure, groom it, win its trust. Surrounded by black and brown faces, getting away from the weight on his shoulders since Dad died in a car accident, and he felt like it was up to him to take care of Mom, and Randall. 

Randall, the son who looked like Tom Carlin, the jokester and prankster who could make Mom smile while Rufus was gravely busy working so hard to keep things together for all of them. Randall, who’d died at twelve caught in the crossfire of yet another stupid senseless turf war while walking home from school together. Rufus was fourteen, his last year of middle school. Mere months after he’d met Connor Mason and the man kindled hopes in Rufus’ heart that the future could be bright. Survival was sometimes a senseless matter of feet, or even inches. Five feet one way, Rufus would have been hit instead of Randall, or five feet the other way, the bullet would have missed entirely. If the bullet hit two inches further up on his body, Randall might have survived.

He’d seen the light die in his mom’s eyes again when she saw her baby’s body in the morgue. Then came Kevin--he’d had to be both brother and father there after Mom telling him at Thanksgiving his sophomore year of high school that she was pregnant, that her deadbeat asshole of a boyfriend, Lamar, had finally run off. He hadn’t had the heart to tell her Lamar was no good. She’d been so happy, for the first time in so long, and honestly, he thought she was happier to have had Kevin than in being with Lamar. Maybe she’d hoped for that. 

Kevin would be graduating high school next June. He already said he wanted to go to trade school to become an electrician--he’d make a damn good living at that. He could only hope like hell that he’d be there to see it. He’d missed so much since this whole insanity started with people storming Mason Industries a year and a half ago now. “Kidnapping” Emma and stealing the Mothership, and his life hadn’t been sane or the same since. He’d called Mom after Mason Industries blew up and assured her that he was OK, but that he was involved with something top secret, totally essential. Probably wouldn’t be able to talk to her that much. Better to keep his distance for their safety. No, he wouldn’t be able to see them until it was over. _Please don’t ask questions. Don’t get too close to this._

There had been a long, long pause on the phone. Georgina Carlin had said softly, “OK, baby. Then you keep yourself safe--you and Jiya both, ‘cause I’ll assume she’s in this mess too--and you call me when you can.”

Good thing he hadn’t had to call and explain that Wyatt’s sorta-ex sorta-not “it’s complicated and I can’t make up my mind” wife had kidnapped Jiya so they’d be going to the 1880s to rescue her, and yeah, he’d better keep Jiya safe, because Dad hadn’t come home one night and the next time Rufus saw him he was in his coffin, and he’d watched Randall die instantly, and he was _absolutely not_ going to lose Jiya. 

“At least Bear Creek was a four-horse town,” he muttered to himself. Nudging the horse into a brisker trot, he surged ahead of the rest of them, pointing the trail towards where the folks in town had said “Jane” had headed out last night, riding and also leading a packhorse loaded with supplies, towards a Chinese mining camp on the river. Terrain too rough for a wagon, apparently.

“We two are the best riders of the team. Rufus and I have point, we’ll scout ahead a bit,” Garcia said, and Rufus heard the hoofbeats of the man’s horse increase behind him, until he pulled up alongside. Once they’d opened up some of the distance between the two of them and Lucy and Wyatt and the spare horse for Jiya, he looked over at Rufus. “We’ll get her back.”

“Damn straight we are,” he said grimly. No other outcome was going to be acceptable on this. They’d gotten out of so many scrapes. He’d rebuilt Lifeboat parts with a lousy 18th century forge after Rittenhouse tried to sabotage the Lifeboat. Finding Jiya, when they were on her trail, and getting her to come home from this Bear Grylls nightmare she’d been living in before Rittenhouse could get to her? Piece of cake. “But I’m sure Emma’s hot on the trail.”

“Twelve years of Little Hermitage On The Prairie around this time period? I’d imagine so. She almost definitely can ride and shoot.”

“Yeah, well, so can you.” They were close enough, but the man wasn’t about blabbing details regarding his apparent years as a guerilla fighter in between leaving the Croatian Army and heading to the Middle East after 9/11, but he’d told Rufus once about being a horse soldier in Chechnya. “So make sure you shoot her before she shoots you.”

“Ah, the second principle of war.” 

“What’s the first principle?”

“Don’t start a war you’re not willing to fight to the finish,” he said, a grim cast to his mouth for a moment, and he tugged down the brim of his hat, hand passing over the butt of the revolver strapped to his hip. 

“Yeah, well, I think neither we nor Rittenhouse are gonna fail on that one, so…”

“No. But that’s not the mission today. We’re here for Jiya. On that, we’re all agreed. Even Wyatt.”

“You gonna lecture me on forgiving him?”

Garcia snorted in amusement at that. “No, thanks. I’ll leave the convincing us to see the best in people to Lucy. Though I’m honestly surprised you let him on the mission.” 

“I told all of you. I want as much muscle as possible on this. He may be largely responsible for this clusterfuck, but he’s good in a fight, and I think I can trust him to not turn on us deliberately.” He hoped so, anyway. If Jessica was in the picture here, who knew. There would be time to blame and resent later for the broken trust and Wyatt’s stupid selfish carelessness with all of their lives and loved ones. Right now, he had his priorities, and the only one that mattered was bringing Jiya back home. He reined in for a moment, Garcia seeing it and following suit. “Though when we get back, we’ll see. And if Jessica’s here and he screws it up for us again because of her...” He’d already seen Wyatt basically stalk and kill a man for Jessica’s sake. He’d gone along that time. He wished he hadn’t, given an innocent man died, and seeing what Jessica was now, and how Lucy had been hurt by all the melodramatic bullshit. 

“The things we do for love,” Garcia said, mouth twisting into a wry smile. Rufus couldn’t help but feel the sting of it, the implied _And here you are ready to go berserk on 1887 for Jiya’s sake._

“You should talk,” he snapped back. “You’ll do absolutely anything for Lucy but admit to her that you love her.” _You giant idiot, she loves you too, but you’re gonna have to make the move here because she’s been burned that badly._ He half-regretted it the moment he said it, because it was his fear and his temper talking, but on the other hand, it wasn’t a lie.

Garcia reined in his horse completely at that, shaking his head in obvious irritation. “Oh, come on, Rufus. Me making a move while she’s still upset and trying to get Wyatt to back off, that doesn’t seem a little predatory to you? I’m being her friend. That’s what she needs right now. Not another guy screwing with her emotions. And as much as I’d like to punch Wyatt--and believe me, _I want to_ because he’s caused this whole thing by being an entitled jackass--Lucy can handle him herself.” He nodded towards the steep canyon walls up ahead. “Right now, let’s worry about the mission and fixing _your_ love life, huh?” 

He couldn’t help thinking of the woman in that ancient photograph in Lucy’s book, repeater rifle in one hand, cocked Stetson over a braid thrown over the shoulder of her belted coat, one booted foot on the step of a wagon, chin tilted up proudly and eyes fierce. _Jane Merry, Snake River trader of mixed Native American and white ancestry. Lewiston, Idaho, c. 1887._ The innocuously decorative-looking Klingon letters on the wagon side under the Chinese and English letters saying “Merry Trading”, telling them the GPS coordinates of where to find the Lifeboat a bit east of Eugene, and a message: _I love you_.

Jiya Marri--Jane Merry. I love you. There was no question after that. He wasn’t walking away from her. Like hell he would. Like hell he could. She’d survived being kidnapped by Rittenhouse, escaped in a damaged Lifeboat, survived here long enough to become that woman in the picture with the fierce gaze. A far cry from being their backup pilot who he knew damn well Denise had rotated her in for just a couple of missions, and that reluctantly and only because someone was injured. It was because of her heart murmur. He hadn’t argued that as hard as he might. _If she can manage weekend sexual marathons with me, Denise, I think she’s fine to go on pretty much any mission, thanks._ He could admit now that maybe he’d been relieved knowing she’d be back with Connor, safe and sound, that he wouldn’t need to panic like he was now about her being at risk. He hadn’t fought for her like he probably should. But maybe Garcia was right. Maybe that was Jiya’s fight. And the woman in that picture, looking like an insane badass, likely would be able to say that nobody put Jiya in the corner. 

Lucy, Wyatt, and the spare horse pounded up then, reining to a halt. “What’s up?” Lucy asked, looking at Garcia. “Did you find something?”

Garcia shook his head, all brisk business. It was really only back in the bunker he turned into an awkward idiot around her. “No. Just figured before we charge in like the Light Brigade, we’d better hold up and let you do the briefing,” one corner of his mouth turned up in a smile.

She returned the slight smile. “Got nothing on this one, huh?”

He rolled his eyes, giving a dramatic rolling shrug. “As ever, Doctor Preston, I bow to a superior historical intellect. Call me when it’s Tecumseh’s Rebellion and I’ll have something.”

Lucy dropped the reins, letting the horse graze lightly on the grass beside the worn dirt path. “All right. From what I can figure on the place and date, we’re walking into the Hells Canyon Massacre.”

Rufus stared at her. Sometimes, when it came to the history, it was almost better to not ask. “Uh, excuse me? ‘Hells Canyon Massacre’? The only word in that phrase that doesn’t promise really unpleasant stuff is ‘Canyon’ and call me crazy, but I really don’t like one in three odds.”

“One of the worst massacres of Chinese immigrants in American history,” Lucy answered him. “The tide of anti-Chinese discrimination has been rising for a while. The Chinese started coming here during the California Gold Rush, and after the Civil War, more gold and building the railroads--the Chinese contributed hugely to the labor pool for both. The Trans-Continental Railroad would have been impossible without them. But racism and xenophobia won out, of course. Congress passed an act in 1875 that prevented almost all Chinese women from emigrating. With their wives and kids back in China, that kept a lot of Chinese people from staying permanently. And five years ago, in 1882, they shut the door totally with the Chinese Exclusion Act. Banned all Chinese immigrants except those here already. Americans complained about Chinese laborers taking their jobs.”

Some things never changed. “Maybe they intended to build a wall and to make China pay for it,” Rufus muttered sarcastically. “I hear Chinese people make the best--they make great walls.” 

Lucy sighed at the bad joke and moved on briskly. “Anyway. They kept renewing the ban right up until World War Two when China became an ally.”

“Coincidentally, right about when Japan became the new favorite Asian big bad and they started herding them into internment camps,” Garcia chimed in. “Our mission to the Russo-Japanese War did nothing to scratch that, unfortunately.”

“There have been outbreaks of violence in the last few years, and in this case, a gang of local bandits and horse thieves ride into a mining camp with thirty-plus Chinese miners there, and killed them all. Maybe for their gold, maybe as a hate crime, probably both. They…” She hesitated, then pushed on. “They threw the bodies in the river. They were fished out sixty miles downriver in Lewiston. Otherwise, remote as this camp apparently is, the world might have never known what happened.”

His heart seemed to stop in that second, then resumed beating, pounding furiously in his chest. “And that same mining camp is where Jiya is headed right now? Not only does she have everyone’s least favorite Rittenpsychos after her, she’s got racist assholes headed there too intent on some fun and slaughter, and hey, might I remind you, Jiya’s definitely _not_ lily white?”

They let him get it off his chest, which he appreciated. Wyatt still hadn’t said anything since the jump except logistical necessities, which he also appreciated. The last thing he wanted right now was for Wyatt to make this all about him and his guilt, rambling through apologies like slapping spackle on a crumbling wall and hoping that would fix it. Because no, they weren’t remotely OK, and even once they got Jiya back--because he wouldn’t allow for any other possibility--his helping out with that wasn’t going to wipe the slate clean.

Lucy slapped a hand on her trouser-clad thigh, chin lifting with determination. “We’re going to go in there, and we’re going to find her, and we’re going to get her back. And then we’re all getting out of here and going home together. Clear?”

“Crystal,” Garcia answered. “But let’s get going. No point dawdling when an ambush is brewing.” He scanned the steep crags and peaks up ahead, like jagged, snaggled teeth punching up into the sky. He shot a look at Wyatt. 

“Yeah. Terrain’s too steep to scout on the wings.”

“Apparently Hells Canyon is America’s deepest river gorge,” Garcia said with almost excessive cheer. “Very scenic, and a total bitch for travel.” 

“We stick to the trail. I’ll take point.” A look passed between the two soldiers that Rufus couldn’t quite read, and Garcia gave Wyatt a curt nod.

“Rear guard,” Garcia answered. “Rufus and Lucy, you stick between us.”

With that, there was little time for talking, focusing hard on the ride around the steep, winding slopes, the path no more than a vague suggestion worn into the vegetation by the rare passage of a horse’s hooves. Rufus had to admit he was glad Wyatt could figure out where the hell they were going, and make sense of the directions they’d gotten at the general store in Bear Creek. One summer at Bright Horizons had taught him a few things, but orienteering--and wilderness survival--definitely weren’t among them. God, he missed a good GPS right now. 

Coming down from yet another peak, thirsty and feeling the heat of the midday sun, having shucked his jacket at least an hour ago and stuffed it into a saddlebag, he made ready to follow yet another downslope. But then he saw Wyatt had pulled up, pausing on the crest. He pointed, and Rufus’ eyes followed his finger. The river carved its way through the canyon down below, glinting in the late spring sunlight, and then he spotted the two horses drinking at the water’s edge, one laden with sacks of provisions. “Found her,” Wyatt said with satisfaction.

It was all he could do to not race at probably literal breakneck speed down the mountain, but Wyatt had the good sense to pull his horse aside and let Rufus take the lead. Picking his way down the path carefully, it seemed to take forever, but as the slope became shallower, he gave the bay horse another nudge with his heels, urging him on, and yelled, “Jiya!”

He would have known her anywhere. Being dressed in Old West attire, and some distance away, couldn’t change that he knew the shape of her, the way she stood, the way she walked. She stopped walking back to the horse and her head shot up. He saw her hands go to her mouth, and then he jumped off the horse, regretting it for a moment as he felt the sharp twinge in his left ankle, but it was fine, that didn’t matter because he was running to her, across the scrub and gravel of the beach.

Catching up to her, he couldn’t stop in time and the two of them tumbled down to the ground, and shit, some of that broken scree tumbled down the mountain to land here and he felt a bit of it cut his left arm, and she might have effectively landed on a bed of razor sharp rocks. He looked at her, unable to help asking, “Oh my God, Jiya, are you OK, I didn’t mean to knock you over, and--”

She shut up his apologetic babbling by grabbing him behind the neck and pulling him down, kissing him so fiercely he swore he saw sparks. How both of them could be laughing and crying all at once, two seemingly opposing forces existing simultaneously, he had no idea, but it was real. She smelled like sweat and horses rather than her favorite rose scented soap, but she was alive, and real, and he was holding her once again. “How did you find me?”

Some part of him was aware of an audience--their three teammates plus what had Lucy said, thirty-plus Chinese miners, but all of them politely hung back. “We found your picture.”

Sitting up, she grabbed his hand, holding on to it tight. “I--I’d almost given up hope. I took that picture three years ago, right when I first hit the road.” 

Now he looked closer, and he could see the subtle changes in her features, and it wasn’t just skin being a bit weathered from apparently being a traveling trader to gold miners. She’d lost some of the last of that youthful roundness to her features. His heart ached with the sudden implications. “Three...you’ve been here _three years_? The book said it was circa 1887, and then when we got the Lifeboat going again, Rittenhouse jumped to today, so we assumed you’d ended up here in 1887, that you’d been here for, I don’t know, a few weeks?” But something in him must have known, if he’d bothered to think it over. For her to have a trading wagon like that? She hadn’t been there for three weeks. “Jiya, I’m so, so sorry. You being here for even a day, all alone, was way too long.” 

She’d been stuck here for three years. Praying, wishing, losing hope by the week, by the month. “Did you--” How did he even ask this? “Do you want to--I mean, if you…” He felt like he might as well grab one of those sharp bits of scree and slice his own heart out, because it all hurt so much. “We kept you waiting so long, if you have a life here, that’s totally OK, if you have--like,” he glanced at the Chinese men keeping a polite distance still, “Lucy told us Chinese women couldn’t come to American, so do you have a hot Asian boyfriend here?” Or worse, a hot Asian husband?

She shook her head, and laughed, and he felt like he’d never heard a sweeter sound in his life. “No, you idiot, you’re my boyfriend. Po and all the rest are just friends.”

He looked down, embarrassed to have asked, but relieved. “Well. Then guess you’re coming back with us?”

She cradled his face in her hands, smiling at him. “Of course I am.”

“The Lifeboat’s a good four hour ride back near Bear Creek.”

He’d missed her smile so much, luminous and sweet, and the full force of it overwhelmed him. It had been barely a week he’d been without her while they frantically searched all those books, and then traveled up to Eugene and repaired the Lifeboat enough to get it here and back, and how much worse for her must it be for it having literally been years? “Rufus. I sometimes ride days in these mountains to mining camps. I tell unruly miners to shut up and keep their hands to themselves. Break a finger or wrist or two if they didn’t get it and tried to grab me. I’ll be fine.”

“You are scary tough,” he breathed, looking at her, all at once unnerved and amazed at her. Three years. How much had she changed? But he would have the chance to find out.

Now one of the Chinese men did approach, squatting beside Rufus and Jiya. “Jia,” he said, eyeing Jiya, saying her name with a singsong lilt and a different emphasis, and then rattled off in rapid-fire Chinese. Mandarin or Cantonese? He had no idea.

Jiya surprised him by answering back just as fluently. “This is Chea Po,” she gestured to the man, “and he knows that you’re my fiance. They knew I was--kidnapped years ago and that’s how I ended up here in Oregon.”

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Chea.” He assumed, like Japanese, that Chinese people put the surname first. From the way neither Jiya nor Chea corrected him, Thank God for all those years of anime.

“There are like twenty guys who’d go by ‘Mr. Chea’ here,” Jiya told him dryly in an undertone. “Chea Ling, Chea Yow, Chea Sun...they’re all from the same clan, same village. Came over here together.”

“So you find your Jia,” Chea said, his English heavily accented, but fairly good. “Good. She has been waiting three years.” He grinned, expression tinged with ruefulness. “Eight years now since I left Guangzhou. Eight years since I saw my Xia. Another year or two here in _Gum San_ and maybe then I can go back and see her.”

“ _Gum San_?” he asked. 

Chea nodded. “We Chinese call this land ‘Gold Mountain’.” He smiled that crooked, whimsical smile again, the lines in his face telling Rufus that this was a man who smiled and laughed often. “Not so good as we’d like. We heard stories about gold in the streets that you just pick up.” Absurdly Rufus couldn’t help but think of “An American Tail” and mice singing about streets in America being paved with gold. “But this camp here, we don’t do so bad.”

The rest came in then, and Jiya greeted all of them with hugs. He noted wryly that she didn’t hesitate to hug Wyatt. Whether she was just so grateful to have rescue at hand, he wasn’t ready to forgive the man just yet. Not by a long shot. Getting here and helping get Jiya back helped, but it didn’t balance the scales.

Garcia shot Wyatt a look. “Someone’s got to go take lookout while the rest of us help load the boats and get the miners out. Rittenhouse and the raiders are coming. Maybe you want to volunteer?”

Wyatt’s blue eyes sparked with temper. “Look, I’m here, I didn’t mean for this to happen--”

“How about we don’t turn this into a pissing contest?” Rufus shot back at them. “One fistfight between you two today was enough. We have a job to do. Let’s do it.” He looked at Garcia. Did they really want Wyatt taking lookout? If Jessica was riding with Rittenhouse, would they be able to rely on him? “You’re the mountain scout. Plus unless you’re doing a creepy Mr. Rochester and have a woman locked in the bunker we don’t know about, you don’t have a wife with Rittenhouse, so, hey, we know _you’ve_ got your priorities straight.”

“Fair point,” Garcia said coolly. “I’ll go. The one good thing is that they’ll be subject to that same bottleneck on the trail so we’ll see them coming. Not too far ahead with as winding as the path was, but it’ll do.”

“Lucy, looks like you and me,” Wyatt said hastily, turning on his heel and heading for the rafts.

“Jiya, explain this to them?” Rufus asked her. Chea Po’s English wasn’t bad, but if she could speak their language, that would help. “We need to get them out of here.” He watched Garcia swing into his saddle and trot back towards the mountain peak, rifle in hand.

Great idea in theory. In practice, some of the miners immediately shook their heads. One, Kong Nhan, insisted they should stay. “This is our claim,” Jiya translated softly for Rufus. “We’ve spent over a year working here. I’m not about to leave everything we’ve worked so hard for because a couple of white men think they can scare us. Besides, if we leave, what will the company do to us?” She sighed.

“Company?” he asked, glancing at Jiya and Lucy.

“Most of the Chinese laborers were signed on by big firms in San Francisco,” Lucy answered him. “They likely still owe a lot for their passage over, supplies, and the like. Jiya, I’m going to guess from how they were looking at Wyatt that _sa...sa gwelu_ isn’t good?”

“ _Sai gweilo_ ” Jiya corrected her. “And no, it’s not good, because it’s kind of like saying ‘asshole white guy’.”

“We don’t have time.” Wyatt suddenly looked weary, boyish features tired. “I’ve seen this before. Some just won’t leave, no matter how much you tell them what’s coming. Let’s get the ones we can out of here.”

He couldn’t disagree.

They turned out to have only ten minutes, which was barely enough for the miners to grab their essentials and hit the rafts. Of thirty-four, thirty agreed to leave downriver, led by Chea Po. Kong Nhan and three others insisted on sticking it out. “We’ll protect the site. Come back upriver tomorrow,” Kong told Chea. “And either you rejoin us and we get back to work, or you bury us and tell our families about us. You’re our leader. Keep them safe.” 

Chea nodded, clasping Kong’s hand for a minute, then hopping on the raft and pushing off from the riverbank. Just then, the crack of a gunshot split the air, then another, and then it was like thunder rolling through the mountains, a steady ominous crackling boom.

Lucy paused for only a split second, then looked upslope towards where Garcia must be. “Let’s go.”

It took a few minutes to pick their way back up the slope, and on the way, they met Garcia coming down. “I picked off two, maybe three of the raiders,” he reported, with a grim smile of satisfaction. “But the rate of fire got too hot, nowhere good for cover, and they were getting too close. Still four of them left, plus Emma and Jessica, and they’ll have the high ground coming down.”

“My mother?” Lucy asked him, words too flat and neutral.

He paused, leaning on a rock for a moment, trying to calm down from the kick of adrenaline. “She and Nicholas were in the raiding party.” He wet his lips, holding Lucy’s gaze with his. “She--I saw through the binoculars that she Carol and Emma were obviously arguing. About you, I assume. It looked like Carol was going to break loose, maybe come warn you?” He fell silent then.

“Oh,” Lucy said, faintly. “Oh.” She inhaled a shuddering, shaky breath, and Rufus watched her straighten her spine, lift her chin in that ironclad determination she had, the way he’d seen her face other unbearable missions and situations in the past. “Tell me, Garcia,” she demanded.

“Emma shot her in the back, then turned and shot Nicholas. She saw the chance for a coup, I guess.” Rufus kept silent, letting them have that moment. Though privately, he had to think Carol Preston was no loss. Big Rittenbad who’d kidnapped her own daughter to brainwash her into joining the cult? The Lucy they’d found in St. Mihiel wasn’t the same one who’d been so ready to get get Carol and Henry together months before. She’d become tougher, darker.

Lucy gave a grim-sounding laugh. “Probably she only wanted me alive so she could try to indoctrinate me further.”

“Lucy--” The sharp angry buzz of a bullet flying nearby cut that conversation off, and they all ducked for cover. He glanced a moment uphill to see a familiar figure with red hair flowing from beneath her battered hat aiming down at them. 

The world turned to a cycle of duck, peep, aim, fire, retreat, reload with hands shaking with the adrenaline raging through his veins. Waiting for them to do the same, to peek above or around a rock formation, or to scramble downhill for another bit of cover, and offer an opportunity for a shot. The cascade of bullets he’d heard from the mountain peak turned into a still surprisingly steady staccato sound puncturing the air. Never long enough silent for his frayed, jangling nerves to start to settled. 

Six of them, plus Kong’s four, against six raiders. They could do this. He took only a moment to look for Jiya, seeing her five feet away behind another boulder, handling her own rifle with surprisingly steady hands. She looked over at him, and for a moment, their eyes locked. He gave her a smile. _We’re getting out of here, babe, I promise you. We didn’t go through all of this to find you and bring you back to have it end like--_

Something stung his neck, and when he reached up, his fingertips came away painted red. Things went fuzzy, black spots fading in from the edge of his vision, like an old TV getting bad pixels. Distantly, through an increasing roar in his ears, he heard Jiya scream something--his name? _Oh. Oh no. So it does end like this._

~~~~~~~~~~

Landing the Lifeboat in the middle of the mountains was no mean feat, given for once they genuinely cared for pinpoint planning on where to jump the Lifeboat rather than their default of “outskirts of this place and in friendly terrain”. She’d scanned Google Earth furiously, and chosen a site only about a hundred yards upriver, only hoping that the same gravelly beach was there in 1887. She hadn’t been able to find a good map of the river from before about 1920, which didn’t surprise her. Getting a great map of San Francisco in 1888 wouldn’t have been a problem. For Hells Canyon, an area that remote wouldn’t have been that well surveyed for a long, long time.

But she thought both hydrology and geology were on their side. The rapids on the Idaho side of the river right there would erode that bank, and she guessed that gravel beach was part of deposition from the slower waters on the Oregon side. Now they’d have to roll the dice and pray that the winding Snake River hadn’t changed in the area that much in a hundred and thirty years. The fact that the Chinese miners’ camp was apparently there at the recently-dubbed “Chinese Massacre Cove” gave her some hope that the river’s course had stayed largely steady.

They’d talked about it, back and forth, over the last four weeks, and the plan had evolved from that first roundtable. Decided one thing: _we keep it clean and simple._ They were so used to the usual pattern--get there, identify what the hell Rittenhouse wanted, blend in as best they could, try to either stop the plan it its tracks or else scrape up the appropriate patch to undo the worst of the damage. So many moving pieces, and they’d tried to make that happen with this plan until it struck them that it was all so much superfluous stuff.

They didn’t need to worry about any of that here. They were there in the middle of nowhere and were there to save Rufus. No landing and immediately scheming about getting horses, clothes, or money. No need for a secondary jump with an imprecise chrono-nav. No big concerns about the history. All they had to do was avoid being seen by their other selves, and the only history they were looking to save was Rufus’. 

It sounded like the other versions of them had done most of the bigger history saving already--most of the miners had safely escaped downriver. Two had died, determined to fight for their mining claim. Much as she wrestled with the idea that with that mission report, they should try to step in, save those two as well, or kill Emma, but it came back down to simplicity, Wyatt and Garcia’s firm insistence on sticking to a single task rather than chasing half a dozen. Which was a lot like experimental design--you needed to pick one objective and run the entire plan around it, or chase half a dozen things and get none of them done cleanly. She could understand that. 

There would be other days to kill Emma, and she’d see that bitch dead if it was the last thing she did. The two miners had understood they might die. So the best she could do was honor their courage. 

So they’d land as close as they could to the mining site, along the riverbank where it intersected with Deep Creek. Bring as many modern guns as they could. Sneak in away from the trail, and be ready to go. Keep it simple, get it done. 

It still felt weird to climb into the Lifeboat dressed in jeans and a yellow, orange, and black plaid button-down, and know that she wouldn’t have to try to hunt up those clothes again before they jumped home. Or else not worry about having abandoned them in the past--preferably somewhere they’d never be found by people who’d wonder what kind of tailor’s mark “Old Navy” was. They’d long since learned to not wear anything on a jump that they didn’t want to lose. As they’d headed to the control room for the team to jump to 1863, Rufus had still groaned about losing his favorite black Chuck Taylors in 1692.

She breathed in roughly, remembering it, remembering her promise to buy him another pair. The last time he’d been there and things had been lighthearted enough to joke, because when they came back, everything changed the next morning. And then after that, he never came back to complain about his Chucks or anything else. 

Should she have bought those Chucks? For an absurd, irrational moment, as she punched in the coordinates, she had the icy fear that she should have bought them. Maybe she’d jinxed this whole thing by not doing that. She hadn’t let herself think about those sneakers in months, and only now, when it was too late, did she do so.

Though--had this Rufus even lost the Chucks to care about them? Here on the verge of taking the leap, she had to wonder who the man they would bring back would be. But it didn’t matter. He was Rufus, and from the mission reports, and Denise and Connor’s reminisces, he was almost the same man. That was more than enough. It wasn’t like he’d be the Rufus version of Evil Spock, especially not sporting a stupid goatee. 

“Hey,” Lucy said lowly, leaning in and putting a hand on Jiya’s shoulder. “We’ve got this.” 

Jiya nodded at that, grateful at Lucy seeing her spiraling out a bit, then mind a bit clearer, turned back to the console. She heard them buckling in behind her.

“So, uh, you both said the Lifeline kick was pretty bad? ” Wyatt asked.

“A lot of that might have been how short a timeline distance it was, but yeah, it was bad,” Lucy answered him.

“Considering you still look green half the time on jumps,” Garcia said with excessive glee, “you’re pretty much guaranteed to puke. Bet you’re regretting all that black coffee right now, huh?” 

“I can fly in a plane just fine. Hell, I can parachute in, no problem, from 10,000 feet. I don’t know what it is about the damn Lifeboat!”

Garcia and Lucy reported the Lifeline worked. She’d noticed Denise didn’t press them for too many details on the missions, like she normally did. Just jotted down enough for the records to say the Lifeline test had been successful. Whatever those two did, something about saving each others’ lives in the past, they were at the point none of the team questioned it too much. Another of those _whatever time travel Möbius strip Garcia and Lucy apparently have between them_ moments. Fate, destiny, whatever, seemed like they’d finally moved on with it. Though she’d noticed that the glacial pace between them had certainly picked up, because they’d moved in together after coming back from St. Petersburg. She had to appreciate that they were discreet, and she didn’t hear loud and enthusiastic sex on her way to the bathroom. Some part of her dryly though Wyatt deserved that, though. 

She reached for the controls, deliberately flicking the switch to engage the Lifeline module, trying to hold her own hands steady. “OK. Here we go.”

They weren’t kidding. As they landed, she winced, feeling like she’d been punched in the stomach, and hurriedly popped the hatch open. She had the presence of mind to immediately hit the cloaking button, though only a narrow strip of gravel headed towards the mining camp, and a steep rock face blocked most of the view. That had been what she’d hoped for--she’d seen that rock formation on the satellite pictures, and geological time had helped them there. A hundred and thirty years was nothing on that scale. 

At least the riverbank was right nearby, and she wobbled over to it, dropping to her knees and regretting it as a sharp-edged rock cut both her jeans and her knee, but she couldn’t focus on that as she felt like she was throwing up everything right down to her toenails. Seeing a fish leaping midway out in the river, she heaved an awkward laugh. _Literally feeding the fishes. Great._

Once the worst was over, splashing water on her face, rinsing her mouth out, she glanced aside to see the three of them having endured their own ordeal. They all looked about as miserable as she felt.

“Great, the Lifeline works,” Wyatt reported wearily, voice kept low. “Though thank God we gave that thing an off-switch, because if every jump is this bad--”

“We could market it as a new diet,” Garcia wisecracked, sagging back against the rock face, stretching his long legs out in front of him. “Lifeline! Makes you not want to eat for the next, mm, twelve hours?”

“I’m not sure I ever want to eat again,” Wyatt said wearily, turning aside and gagging yet again, still doubled over. Jiya had to agree. Her stomach still kept giving a few rolling heaves of protest.

“Here,” Lucy said, reaching in her pocket, and taking out a small green foil packet. “Ginger candy. It should help.” 

Garcia glanced skyward, shading his eyes. “Looks like late morning, and the mission report estimated the firefight happened shortly after noon, so at least we won’t have half the day to wait.” 

Jiya nodded at that. “Then get your candy, get the guns, and let’s find somewhere to hide.” Uncloaking the Lifeboat long enough to grab the arsenal, thankful for the lessons of the last few months in firing a gun, she hit the button again and watched it vanish. 

The steep slope, damp with spring rain, made for slow going, and they carefully picked their way up. Staying low, Wyatt took their right flank, watching as they crept uphill, watching towards the camp. Finally they settled behind cover, well away from the path, but able to look down at the camp and see the goings-on. Easily within the range of a rifle. They watched the miners at work, and then as at least an hour crept by, two horses approached down the mountain path, one of them carrying the woman who was obviously her counterpart in this timeline.

She watched that Jiya pick her way down the path with confidence. _What was it like for you? Mountain trader rather than being a blackjack dealer?_ But she tried to not let that in. Focus--the mission. The mission was all that mattered right now.

But it was so hard to focus when Rufus came down and she swore she could hear Jiya’s cry of joy all the way up in their hiding place. Six months since she’d seen him, and there he was, alive. So thrilled to see the woman he loved, and she had to steel herself to not remember those few minutes in the Bison Horn, thinking of the wild hope, fierce and fine, that everything would be all right. Kissing him again for the first time in three years, comforted at seeing that it was as sweet and wonderful as she’d remembered. 

They couldn’t change things that day. Today, they could, and would. They all sat there silently, watching and waiting. Not saying anything so it couldn’t give away their position, but occasionally giving hand signals. Gesturing to their eyes, _Look_ , and then at whatever they wanted to point out. Wyatt and Garcia seemed to be having some kind of conversation in whatever tactical signals they had, and as for Lucy and Garcia, well, those two idiots seemed able to have a conversation with a mere nod and a lift of an eyebrow. 

They were her friends, her family, her team, and she believed in every one of them. Things happened quickly from there--Garcia headed for the mountain peak, and the shooting started soon after. 

For a hot minute, they’d hesitated when talking about joining the firefight. What if one of their bullets hit one of the others? If someone like Lucy died, they wouldn’t get another redo. Hell, maybe one of their bullets had hit Rufus in the first place. But--maybe they’d been part of the heavy gunfire reported. And in the end, they’d all agreed that they were willing to break the rules enough to change history for the better in some ways. They would take this particular risk.

And crouching there behind that rock, she knew that it was the right choice, and that sitting there waiting it out would have been too much. Bracing herself, she pushed up just enough to break cover to see, picking out one of the raiders, aiming for his dirty red bandana, and fired. It felt good. She hadn’t gotten to fight them in Chinatown, except for that desperate attempt to shoot the man with the yellow teeth and spurs before he could gut Rufus. This time, she was fighting back with everything in her, all her rage and grief and determination, and all the skill Wyatt and Garcia had helped give her with a rifle.

As the rate of fire died down, as the last of the raiders fell, she saw Jessica turn tail and run, and Emma do the same. Emma paused, turning to deal a few more shots downhill, right before she spurred her horse after Jessica.

The wild scream chilled her to the bone. She knew that sound. She’d felt it on the porch of the saloon, cradling Rufus in her arms. She watched Lucy racing for her own horse, Garcia loping after her, the slow, laborious way he hauled himself into the saddle using only his left hand making it obvious he probably shouldn’t be walking, let alone trying to get in the saddle and ride.

They waited for the shot that would send Wyatt and Jiya scattering, and the two surviving weary Chinese miners down there eyeing the scene to boot. It wasn’t coming, and her anxiety seemed to spiral higher and higher by the second, feeling time tick away. Finally it dawned on her. _There are no other Rittenhouse people or raiders._ She aimed, very carefully, and loosed two shots that struck a wood crate not ten feet away from Rufus.

She couldn’t hear Wyatt, but saw him grab Jiya’s arm, pointing emphatically towards the mountain. _We have to go_. The Wyatt beside her gestured down the slope. _Follow me. Let’s go._ She nodded at him, heart in her throat. Now every single second counted.

They hurried as quickly as they could, staying wide and half-crouched to avoid being spotted. She still cut her hands in her haste on sharp rocks. Once a mounted Wyatt and Jiya cleared the peak, hearing Lucy’s emphatic, “Go!”, Jiya broke into a flat-out run. Not caring about the two miners eyeing their dead comrades as well as Rufus, she had eyes only for the crumpled form lying there on the gravel. _Allah, I swear, keep him alive, I’ll do anything…_

Then there was a hand on her shoulder, unyielding as iron, jerking her around away from Rufus. Spun to face him--Garcia--she felt her hands clenching into fists. He couldn’t--she had to go to him. She _had_ to go. Punching him might well be about as effective as punching a tree, but she damn well would pop him in the nose if she had to do it.

“There’s no time, Jiya,” he said, the words sharp and demanding. Something shone in his eyes, something besides the hard and fierce determination of a man on a mission. A momentary glimpse of something soft and sad and sympathetic. He must have felt that irresistible pull, tried to run to his wife and daughter the night they’d died, before he’d had to flee for his life. “Remember the plan?” At those words, her mind settled, found a calm center of clarity amidst the raging storm. Yes. The plan. Garcia would carry Rufus. Lucy would tend to Rufus’ wound as best she could. Wyatt would cover them both in case. And she would race ahead to the Lifeboat to get the jump programmed so they could pull Rufus in, buckle up, and immediately get back to 2018. Get the car running, as it were. He saw her coming back to herself, because he nodded, grip on her shoulder easing, giving her an awkward half-pat of reassurance.

She raced around the curve of the jutting rock formation, the strip of beach so narrow that icy cold water squelched into her left sneaker, but she didn’t care. She didn’t look back, couldn’t look back. She’d learned the myth of Orpheus in high school. If she looked back for Rufus, she might not be able to look away, and they’d lose precious seconds. So she tried to clamp down her feelings, steadying herself, and grabbing the paper with the exact jump coordinates for a grassy field next to a high rise across from Tulane Medical Center. Programming it in, she double checked, triple checked, forcing herself to stick with it even as she heard the sound of someone scrambling into the Lifeboat, and the grunts of effort. Triple checked and verified, she flipped the primary switches. She wanted so much to unbuckle, to look back, but she wouldn’t allow herself that. “Are we clear?” she asked.

“Get the hatch,” Wyatt answered. “We’re getting him buckled in.” She sat there, feeling the seconds feel like they infinitely stretched out, which felt like it proved the Grossman-Marić, formerly Einstein, theory of relativity all too neatly.

Finally the felt the thump on the back of her chair, probably Garcia with those long arms able to reach. “We’re good, let’s go,” he said, his own voice tight with tension.

“Is he--” She flipped the Lifeline switch. Wouldn’t do to forget that and kill them all en route, or send them to yet another timeline. She wasn’t sure exactly what would happen, but she wasn’t in the mood to find out.

“He’s alive,” Lucy said, words firm and clear. “I found a pulse. It’s weak, but it’s there.” She closed her eyes for a moment, thanking Allah wordlessly, and keeping them closed, praying with all her might, she hit the final jump switch, familiar enough now with the control panel to do it by feel.

 

The seconds of waiting for them to strap Rufus in had stretched on eternally, time dilating endlessly. Once they hit the ground at Tulane, it compressed every bit as much, everything a rush. It felt more like strobe-like flickers of a bad camera, like the very earliest efforts at film, a series of moments rather than a continuous thing. Jumping from the Lifeboat, trying to not retch again, failing. Hitting the cloaking button and not looking back. Garcia with Rufus slung over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry, yelling at Lucy to grab his NSA badge from his jacket. Wyatt barking about an injury on a federal operation, flashing Garcia’s badge that Lucy handed him. The look on the nurse’s face when she saw Rufus, ushering them back into the emergency room. The gurney, medical staff appearing as if like magic, ready to whisk Rufus away beyond automatic double doors. She caught a glimpse of his face, the ashy grey tint to his skin, how still he was, and nothing like the peaceful stillness of sleep, and had only a moment to brush his fingers with hers, and then he was gone.

Stumbling, stomach still roiling, she tried to not suddenly resent that Lucy and Garcia had been able to see more of him, touch him, and she hadn’t. Eyeing Garcia’s shoulders, less visible against the dark wine red of his button down shirt except as darkness of the shirt being wet. she’d seen he wore red frequently. But she wondered if he’d chosen that one deliberately so she wouldn’t have to stare at the bright red of Rufus’ blood for hours while they waited. He had only a visible smear of blood on his cheek and his right hand, and she saw the traces of it on Lucy’s hands too. Garcia sat down heavily in one of the waiting room chairs, wincing, rotating his bad shoulder. 

“Thank you,” she said to all of them, barely able to say it above a whisper. “Thank you,” she repeated it, with more strength in her voice. They’d gotten him here, alive, and given him a fighting chance. She couldn’t bear the idea of losing him back in that OR, but if that happened, at least they had given it everything. They had tried, and succeeded, as a team.

“We’ll stay here with you,” Lucy promised, putting an arm gently around Jiya’s shoulders, guiding her to a seat. 

Wyatt gave her a reassuring smile. “I’ll call Denise and Connor, let them know we made it and we’re here.” 

Jiya was sure that time would dilate again because the hours ahead would be interminable, but they would all be here together for them. Looking at the three of them, Wyatt pulling out his phone to make the call, Lucy leaning into Garcia’s side and him putting an arm around her in turn, there was nobody else she’d rather have had by her side for this, either in Hells Canyon, or here in this waiting room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Of the likely 34+ victims of the Hells Canyon Massacre, unfortunately the names of only 11 are known.
> 
> Chea Po  
> Chea Ling  
> Chea Sun  
> Chea Yow  
> Chea Cheong  
> Chea Shun  
> Chea Chow  
> Chea Lin-Chung  
> Kong Mun-Kow  
> Kong Nhan  
> Ah Yow


	27. 3x07: Gold Mountain (Jessica/Rufus, Manhattan, Kansas/New Orleans, Louisiana, November 2018)

With the history she’d been reading a lot more intensely these past months, Jessica had to think she was lucky in yet another way to have been born when she was. As the wife of an Army sergeant, she’d likely have followed Wyatt west, stayed in camp while as another gallant boy in Army blue he was off fighting Indians--taking their homes, really. Enduring the worst of a Great Plains winter in some primitive frontier fort with makeshift log cabins, or even a tent. Hoping she didn’t die in childbirth at that fort, because that happened far too often for comfort. Between that risk, and the total ownership a man had of a woman and their children back then, sometimes she thought it was an absolute wonder any woman back then ever had sex with a man or married him, trusted him enough to give him such control over everything: her body, her heart, her money, her childen, her well-being. 

Wyatt had let her down so many times, but at least she would have had options to leave--options aside from Rittenhouse, anyway. She’d tried to leave, hadn’t she? Before Wyatt wouldn’t let her go, right after she ended up in that bunker and then suddenly Carol contacted her and told her that her debt, her duty, to Rittenhouse was to help take care of this. _You’re uniquely placed, Jessica. Please listen to me. Listen to the kind of people that Wyatt is involved with. They broke a terrorist, Garcia Flynn, out of federal prison. This is the man who, given the choice, knowing what it would mean for history, assassinated Abraham Lincoln rather than saving his life. He’s a federal asset gone feral, and they’re going to close ranks, protect him, give him the chance to keep slaughtering his way through so many innocent people._ And for just a moment, she’d wondered if they’d planned this all along. Smothered that sick feeling immediately, telling herself that they’d saved Kevin, that they’d given her a purpose, a place. 

Carol wasn’t wrong. Garcia Flynn’s record was terrifying. And yet, he’d been almost kind, in that weird and socially awkward way he had, the few times they’d bumped into each other in the kitchen or the like. She had to think now maybe it was the sympathy of one misfit for another. Or maybe it was the whole dead wife thing. But that was the first disconnect of what Carol said versus what her instincts told her. It wouldn’t be the last. 

God, how she sometimes wished she’d listened to that voice now. Shoved those divorce papers at Wyatt, and run far, far away from all of it. Lucy and Wyatt might well would have gotten together--though she had her nagging doubts on that now. A super liberal history professor nerd like Lucy and an “aw shucks” good old boy like Wyatt--exactly what did they have to talk about, aside from the mission? But she wouldn’t have the guilt of Rufus’ death, Jiya’s pain, on her soul. All she could do now was try to make up for it as best she could.

It had to be the bleak weather making her feel that way. November in Kansas, freezing her ass off, not even any snow on the ground to make it feel pretty. Wind-whipped flat desolation, so grey and seemingly endless. The summer prairie had its charms. The winter one, particularly without snow, looked like something that should have been at the start of a horror movie, or some depressing Oscar bait. She was miserable and huge and she swore she could hear her ribs and pelvis creaking every time she moved with how they’d been shoved out to make room for Dani.

But at least she had purpose now. Every bit of information she gathered, every conversation overheard, every tiny bit pieced together of what the “arrows”, as Emma dubbed them, might be up to, felt like a small victory. Something to offer in a way to fight back, and she couldn’t help but think that when she finally left, she’d go up to Denise Christopher like a hunting dog with its quarry in its mouth, anxiously waiting to hear if she really was a good girl, if she’d done good enough. 

It wouldn’t be. It couldn’t be. Nothing could really wipe Rufus’ death away, and betraying Rittenhouse after betraying Wyatt only proved she was a very effective liar. But this was all she had to offer, and it would get her and Dani out of here and hopefully not right into a prison cell, and so that would be enough. It would have to be enough. It was better than ending dead with a bullet in the back when Emma decided she was no longer of use, and turning her daughter into part of some crazy new Rittenhouse blood dynasty.

She wouldn’t let herself hope for anything better. Too much hurt already, and she couldn’t afford to be careless now anyway. She was on the verge of getting out, today, so she had to stay strong, stay the course, and get it done. Reaching down, she gave Dani a pat, feeling her kick back in reply. _Whatever else I’ve done, I’ve done my best to keep you safe._

So she looked over at Emma, watching “Lonesome Dove” for what seemed like the thirtieth time in the last six months. There was always a peculiar sparkle to her green eyes when she watched Western stuff, like eagerly seeing an old friend. _If you miss the 1880s that much, Emma, maybe you should have just stayed there and dodged Rittenhouse for real. Done us all a favor._ No, she wouldn’t have done it. She wouldn’t have been willing to live a quiet life in that cabin and died in obscurity for any longer than necessary. Much as she waxed idyllic about it, Jessica saw right through her. It was like that businessman, Ed Lindry, who’d always come into the El Cruce diner when she worked there while she was a teenager. He was a millionaire, in one of the oil businesses. Cheap bastard always barely tipped, and smarmily came on to her. Sighing about how much he enjoyed the simple life out on his ranch, but he wore a Rolex to play cowboy, and always went back to Houston and his penthouse or mansion. He wasn’t made for a simple life, except when he wanted to play-act it, and pretend it said profound things about him that he liked to believe at heart he was somehow pristine. 

Emma was much the same. She didn’t want that “quiet life”, much as she gushed about it still, how much better things had been, how much they’d make America better by simplifying, unifying, getting back to _one nation, under God, indivisible_. She’d gunned down Carol, and the father of her own baby, for the chance to scramble to the top of the heap. She’d gotten too much of a taste for power, for the idea of her grand destiny. Watching her sitting there, stroking the swell of her belly, making her grand insane plans for her daughter’s future, she suppressed a shudder, glad beyond measure that she was getting Dani out.

Looking at the kids sitting there, still so caught up in the lies, she couldn’t help but feel the twinge of sadness. She could have done more there, tried to turn some of them away, but she’d likely have been caught when she chose the wrong one and they told Emma that Jessica was questioning things. She wasn’t the sort to be able to instinctively know how to get someone right in the heart--guess Lucy was the one who worked miracles there by flipping Flynn, by giving the inspirational speeches. She was a spy and a liar, and a damn good one. So she made her choice, and she chased the information instead. Better that she do one thing right than fail at two, lesson learned from Wyatt’s Special Forces tactics there.

“Spoiler alert,” she told Emma, pushing awkwardly up from the chair, “nesting instinct sucks. You literally cannot sit still. I want to go to town and get a few more things. Might as well get the grocery run done while I’m at it.” Two pregnant women, and a dozen twentysomethings with raging young metabolisms, made for a constant flow of food now that Emma had finally pulled all her assets together in this place, and recruited a couple of new ones over the summer. 

The HyVee clerks had gotten used to seeing her, jokingly asking, “What are you running out there, a cult?”

“No, we’re a study retreat for Baptist missionaries, in the months of preparation for their missions,” she’d said with a bright smile, lying through her teeth. Maybe “missionaries” wasn’t all a lie. They’d be going far, far away to try to spread the gospel of Rittenhouse. Though “cult” didn’t seem that far off the mark either. _Potay-to, potah-to._

She scanned the agents sitting there, heading closer to Emma’s chair, seeing the young couple holding hands, their young and earnest faces. Leaned down, brushing her hair from her face, and said softly, “Let me take Jenny and Pete, huh? You said they’re up next. It’s a one-way ticket.” All the agents knew it, and the fact that didn’t dissuade them told her exactly how fanatical they’d become. “Let them enjoy a few last modern comforts before they go to--what, Wounded Knee or the Battle of Bunker Hill or...wherever?”

“Illinois,” Emma said absentmindedly. She turned away from the movie, getting up from her chair slowly, giving her rapidly-increasing bulk, and gesturing her into the kitchen to talk. 

Following like a good dog, leaning against the counter, hearing the sound of gunfire onscreen in the living room, Jessica asked casually, “Illinois? Not Chicago again, I hope.” She hid a grimace at the twinge of a backache.

“No, not Chicago. We didn’t get it done in 1861, but a certain young militia volunteer might have an unfortunate and deadly accident in 1832 during the Black Hawk War.” 

She filed that away, hiding a triumphant smile that Emma had slipped enough to reveal that, or trusted Jessica enough. Either way, it felt like a small victory. “Seriously, Lincoln _again_?”

“Let’s hope the sequel’s better than the original,” Emma quipped, grabbing a box of animal grahams and taking a handful, popping them in her mouth one by one. “No, see,” and something in her gaze turned almost kindly, the master teaching the acolyte, “the mistake was going to 1861, or even Nicholas’ stupid plan with Harriet Tubman’s raid in 1863. Too late. The Whig-turned-Republican ideals were entrenched enough by then. The Civil War took on a momentum of its own. If we cut it off before all that animosity takes root, if we take out one of their golden boys when he’s still just an obscure hick...” She sliced a hand through the air. “Everything is so much calmer. No war that tears the country apart and divides us even now.”

 _No end of slavery either._ God, Jessica would have some concerns she’d be waxing rhapsodic about the Lost Cause, except that she knew Emma hated moonlight and magnolias and grand plantations. _Jumped up white trash. Not an insult--takes one to know one. But you’ve got a chip on your shoulder about it a mile wide about it._ “Well, then let them come with me, and I’ll get them a Coke and some pizza, before they’re shooting squirrels to survive.” 

“They get enough downtime. It’s not like I’m running a boot camp.” No, it would have been easier for them to turn away if she had. She had a strange genius for making it seem like some demented commune, giving them a fairly free hand, making them _want_ to do the work to prepare for their missions, but if they wanted to screw off and play X Box for a while, she wouldn’t stop them. 

Jessica had seen the increasing tide of seriousness over these past months, especially when the losses started, when their friends failed and probably were killed by Denise Christopher’s agents, when Emma greeted that with a cool, “They weren’t prepared enough,” eyeing each of the agents in turn with a knowing look. 

After that, the X Box went more and more idle. The agents didn’t go to movies. They spent more time studying, preparing, becoming harder, sharper, more determined. Isolated from the world, from reality, until everything became a never-ending echo chamber of Rittenhouse doctrine, mission, and purpose. 

It was brilliant and terrifying, because she’d chained them, not with threats, but with their own eagerness to succeed and to please, and their fear of failure and disappointment. The same chains Carol had placed on her, and she’d accepted them. Even Wyatt, the baby, and her own doubts hadn’t been enough to make her break them back when she should have, and these kids didn’t have even that. But Emma took it even further. She’d gotten them to the point she could issue them a suicide pill before putting them in the Mothership, and God help them, Jessica fully believed they’d take it if they failed or were captured.

She’d grabbed one after coming back from Chicago, hoping Emma didn’t count too closely. Kept it sewn in the pocket of her winter coat, because if this all went wrong, Emma wasn’t going to win in the end. She’d die if she failed, rather than let Emma use her as bait to try to draw Wyatt out. She’d see her baby girl dead before she saw her in Rittenhouse hands. In her own way, in the last months, she’d become as hard and ruthless as Emma and the agents herself once given the cold clarity of single purpose. _I will do give anything I can to stop you, no matter what I have to sacrifice of myself._ Too bad she couldn’t just bomb the farmhouse, because there was no way to get them all at once. Like cockroaches, someone would survive, and they’d begin it all over again. “Look, a couple hours out won’t kill them. I’ve seen them the last few weeks. They’re about as ready for their mission as they’re going to get. And you know I need someone to drive and to help carry all those groceries.” She nodded towards the tall redheaded man on the couch. “Pete’s strong. And where he goes, Jenny goes, and vice versa.” 

“And of course you’ll buy them that pizza anyway. Trying to be the cool aunt to my overly demanding mom, huh?” But Emma smiled as she said it, that smile that promised sisterhood and made Jessica’s skin crawl now.

Jessica smiled right back at her. “It’s working, isn’t it? C’mon.”

Emma rolled her eyes. “Fine.”

Sticking her head in the living room, Jessica said, “Jen, Pete, let’s go. Grocery run.”

Jenny drove, chattering incessantly about wanting to get a Thanksgiving meal together. “I mean, Emma says we won’t go for another few weeks, so…”

“Prairie Christmas,” Pete said with a wry smile from the backseat. “Maybe if we ask nicely she’ll let us go after the holidays?”

“Wars don’t stop for holidays, Pete,” Jenny argued. “I mean, Christmas Truce of 1914 aside. If we go in December, we maybe catch them off guard.”

Listening as intently as she could, Jessica had slipped her cell phone from her pocket. She sighed heavily. “And of course my mom’s trying to make holiday plans _already_ to meet her granddaughter. Mom, the kid’s not even born yet.”

Jenny laughed at that. “My mom’s asking when she’s getting grandkids.” The silence in the car stretched out for endless seconds, all of them knowing that there was no plan for the two agents to come back from their mission. Jenny’s mom would never see grandkids. “Haven’t had the heart to tell her that I’m not into having kids anyway. And at least I’ve got a sister for that.”

“You’re doing something bigger than all that,” Jessica said in reassurance, hating herself a little even as she said it. She had to pull off her gloves to text, and winced as the chill in the still-cold Camry hit her fingers. “Can’t say anything against having kids myself, obviously, but what you’re doing is important.”

She hit “send”: _Come get me. Manhattan City Park, 1 hr. Near log cabin. Have early Xmas present for you._ She tried to not make a face thinking it sounded oddly like sexts she’d used to send to Wyatt. Considering she was sending it to both Wyatt and Jiya, as usual, that made it even more awkward. She had to trust they’d be smart enough to find that log cabin on Google Earth or whatever and get the right coordinates. The park would be almost deserted on a Wednesday morning.

In the HyVee parking lot, then the backache turned into a twinging spasm in her stomach and her eyes went wide. _Oh shit._ She forced herself to calm down. She couldn’t lose it now, she’d have hours and hours ahead, but if Jen and Pete saw it, they’d take her either to the hospital or back to the farmhouse, and that was it. She couldn’t let it show.

She handed Jenny the grocery list. “Hurry up and get the shopping down fast, and I’ll go to Pagliacci’s and get some pizza. We can go grab lunch in the park.”

Jen looked at her like she was crazy. “It’s thirty degrees out, Jessica.”

She gave the younger woman a devil-may-care smile. “A little cold weather is worth it to get an extra half-hour or so of peace and quiet, isn’t it? Tell me you haven’t hated living with two hormonal pregnant women and ten other people in a single house for the last few months. Bathroom schedules, no privacy, all of it.” She eyed them. “Especially for a couple, with as thin as those walls are?”

“She’s not wrong,” Pete admitted. “Gotta admit, I’m kind of looking forward to the 1830’s because we’ll finally be alone again.”

Now she had them, and she tried to rein in both her eagerness at pressing the advantage, and the grimace at feeling the pressure slowly starting to turn into a spasming cramp. No worse yet than the cramps during her period, but she couldn’t ignore what it meant. “Well, I’ll see about maybe talking her into letting you stay a night in town before you go. She owes you that, at least, given even if you succeed, you won’t come back. Until then, a pizza break is about the best I can do.” She looked at Pete, sensing he was the easier mark, coaxing him. “I won’t tell if you won’t. We’ll eat fast, put the evidence in the dumpster at the park, and nobody needs to know.” 

She didn’t feel much like eating, but sitting at the picnic table beside the log cabin in the park in the middle of the city, she forced herself to down a slice of pizza in order to appear like everything was business as usual. Though sipping the can of ginger ale felt much better than the food. Looked around at the quiet austerity of the park in winter, the silvery brown of the dead grass, the bare limbs of the trees quaking gently in the breeze against a leaden sky. It was bleak, but it was peaceful, if nothing else. She’d had so little peace in her life, especially in the last few years, with the chaos of Wyatt disappearing on yet another mission with barely a word to her, the failed counseling, his reappearance, then everything that happened in the bunker and after. Watched Jen and Pete, laughing and giving each other soft glances and acting like what they were, twenty-three and in love, she couldn’t help remembering herself and Wyatt with an ache in her heart. When they were that young, Wyatt back on leave from Afghanistan, everything seemed possible, the future theirs for the taking.

Checking her watch surreptitiously, she slid her hand into her pocket, and as the sudden _whoosh_ of air, much hotter than the cold winter breeze, hit her face, she pulled out the pistol. When Pete and Jen looked back from where the metallic sphere with its tripod feet and dual orbiting chains had suddenly appeared--she hadn’t seen it since the bunker, and it looked surprisingly good, obviously they’d done some work on it--they were greeted with the barrel of the gun in their faces. Jen’s dark eyes went wide.

“Sorry,” she said. “This really is for me and my daughter, but this will do you some good too. You both won’t have to go die in 1832 because Emma needs to feel important.”

Pete protested “Jessica, what--”

The hatch slid open, and Flynn leaned out, gripping the edge of the hatch with one hand, his gun trained on her with the other. She saw he was dressed in a light jacket, not fit for this weather. So either he disdained the cold--possible, he was from Poland, wasn’t he, definitely somewhere in Eastern Europe--or else they were hiding down south, somewhere warmer. She saw him take in the scene, letting go of the hatch and hopping down to the ground, advancing towards her, not lowering the gun. She made sure he saw the gun stayed trained on the two kids, not on him. “Hi, Jessica.” He looked at Jen, then Pete. “So...Christmas present, huh? Still kidnapping people into time machines at gunpoint?”

“You should talk, Garcia,” Wyatt called, climbing out from the Lifeboat himself. 

Garcia rolled his eyes. “Two of three, Wyatt--it wasn’t at gunpoint,” he called back boredly, not taking his eyes off Jessica. “Not judging, seriously,” he told her with a wry smirk. “I’m a big fan of realizing your cunning plan has some fundamental moral flaws and it’s actually pretty terrible.”

“Where’s Jiya?” she asked.

“Jiya’s busy,” Lucy said, approaching the scene herself, her own gun drawn. Wyatt hung back, looking at her with an awkward expression, but at least he didn’t have a gun trained on her too.

“Can someone tell me exactly what’s going on here?” Pete said, surprisingly calm. Though given he’d been preparing to go to the 1830’s permanently, and assassinate young Abraham Lincoln, she shouldn’t be surprised he was that calm.

“Jessica is bringing us two Rittenhouse agents--namely you--as a show of good faith.” That smirk grew wider, Flynn looking even more amused. “Nice peace offering. I brought them only information, not actual agents.”

“Because you had a habit of killing Rittenhouse agents on sight,” Wyatt said, obviously annoyed, and she had the feeling he’d been forced to stand back by Flynn and Lucy. He had that expression that said he was about five seconds from a rage explosion.

Flynn shrugged. “Pot, kettle, Wyatt? I didn’t see you in a hurry to keep them alive either. At least not until you ended up married to one.”

“Can we save the retrospective for New Year’s, please?” Lucy said impatiently. “Jessica, who are they?”

Now she had to lay her cards on the table. “They’re Jennifer Tallmadge and Peter Quimby, and they were slated for the next mission in a little over a week. 1832 Illinois. Killing Abraham Lincoln--”

“During the Black Hawk War,” Lucy said, nodding in understanding. “So she’s getting more ambitious in knocking the pillars out from under things early on.”

Jen and Pete stayed utterly silent, obviously waiting to see what would happen. Either it was terror, or more likely, the mentality that had seeped into that of watching, waiting, assessing, looking for their chance and doing nothing rash. “I’m crippling that mission, which should buy you a few weeks while Emma hustles to move other things up. I’m bringing you the two of them, before they could do anything wrong, so fine, interrogate them, try to get through with them. But there’s no need to bury them in a prison where they’ll never see the light of day again.” Because if there was no hope for those two, there certainly wouldn’t be for her. “And I’ve got a fair amount of intel besides.” 

She looked at Lucy defiantly. She’d had to be careful in Chicago in 1890, deferential, pleading her case. This was the point of no return, and time to fight with everything she had for her and Dani. “Is that good enough to get a ticket out of Rittenhouse, given you’ve got a ex-terrorist as a central part of your team?” She’d seen that somewhat in Chicago, the grudging tolerance shifting into Flynn being a more central part of things. but it was glaringly obvious now. Jiya stayed behind, and clearly he and Lucy were calling the shots, rather than Wyatt keeping an eye on him. “Yes, I kidnapped Jiya. Yes, Rufus died because of things I did. But unlike him, I’ve never killed anyone. Sounds like your body count before they caught you was in the dozens, Flynn.”

“I also never betrayed them. And I was never working with Rittenhouse,” Flynn shot back angrily, and she could sense she’d stung him. “ _Everything_ I did was to stop them, not enable them.” 

She looked at him squarely, scared shitless and yet unwilling to let him see her sweat. She’d managed to withstand Emma, who had no conscience. This man did, or else he would have never cared to try to pull himself back from what and who he’d been. She could withstand him too, because if she could live with herself these past months, Garcia Flynn, terrifying ex-murder giant that he was, was nothing. “Yeah, you and I both thought we were doing the right thing. That didn’t make it right.”

“Garcia,” Lucy said softly, and she saw him look at her, something in his expression easing. She cocked an eyebrow, gave him a half-smile. He sighed, and nodded. _Oh, it’s like that between you two now?_

“Fortunately for you, Jessica,” Flynn said coolly, clicking on the safety and lowering his gun, “we all agreed you deserve the chance I got. Don’t make us regret it. Now, before anyone else comes in this park and wonders about the ugly new sculpture,” he nodded to the Lifeboat, “let’s go.”

They got Jen and Pete in first, Lucy with her gun trained on them inside the Lifeboat, Flynn outside. Then Wyatt approached her, still sitting on the park bench, her gun on the picnic table beside the box of half-eaten pizza.

He sat down across from her. He reached out for her hand, then hesitated. “Hey,” he said, giving her that sweet smile of his. “It’s...it’s good to see you again.”

She wasn’t sure what to say, what would become of them after all of this. Everything the last few months had been geared towards getting out, and now that moment was here, and she felt the icy terror of an unknown future. “I don’t want her born in prison,” she said, barely able to muster more than a whisper. “Promise me they’re not just lying.”

“That’s not gonna happen, Jess, I swear--” He reached out and took her hand in his, ungloved, and his hand was warm and callused just like she remembered. She managed a shuddering exhale, half a sob, from the sudden cramping pain, and also from the sense of release. He’d been so cautious in Chicago, showing so little of what he thought and felt, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to be with him again, but she had only hoped that he wasn’t disgusted with her. That maybe someday he could forgive her, and maybe she could forgive him, for all the lies and the deception and how much they’d hurt each other.

“Wyatt, I’m in labor now,” she blurted. “I’m pretty sure. When we leave, I need to get to a hospital. Far from here, wherever you want to take me, because I want to be at least, like, three states away from Emma, pronto.”

Wyatt’s blue eyes went wide, and he looked over his shoulder, calling in a yelp of panic, “Lucy!”

“She’s busy,” Flynn yelled back, poking his head out the hatch.

“She’s in labor!” Wyatt pointed at her.

She swore she felt as well as saw Flynn’s eyeroll. “Then get her in the Lifeboat already!”

It took another few uncomfortable minutes, but she got into the Lifeboat, Flynn surprisingly gentle as he helped haul her up. Jen and Pete sat in two of the seats, buckled in and wrists and ankles fastened with zipties, and obviously unconscious, heads lolling down onto their chests.

“You knocked the two of them out?” Wyatt asked, scrambling in behind her.

“Did we really want their in-flight conversation?” Flynn said glibly. “Besides, I figured we didn’t need them eavesdropping.”

“I’m not complaining,” Wyatt said.

“My, there really is a first time for everything.” Yes, something had definitely shifted. The two of them had picked at each other when she was in the bunker, but there was a vicious edge to it, as if they were poised right on the edge of violence constantly. This was different. The verbal jabs were much the same, but the tone was different, something more like brotherly joking.

She sat down, and Wyatt helped adjust the harness, making do with some bungee cords where it wouldn’t fit over her huge belly.

Flynn sat across from her, leaning forward, watching her carefully. “When did your labor start?” he asked, voice calm and soft.

“Only about an hour ago. Right when I texted Wyatt and Jiya.”

He gave her an almost sympathetic smile. “First baby, you’ve got a long time yet.” For an instant, there was something soft and sad in his eyes, and she could see something gentler in him, remembering he’d had a daughter too. It felt strange to imagine him as the nervous, panicky first time dad with a wife in labor. “Right. Where do you want to go?”

“What?”

“Are we really taking her home with us?” Flynn said, tone brooking no argument.

Wyatt, as usual, was going to argue. “Bullshit, of course we’re--”

Flynn flung out a hand in an impatient gesture. “This has nothing to do with trust, Wyatt. Look, I’m going to remind everyone here that you never found me in Mexico after I got careless with that first hideout, so hey, maybe I know a thing or two about this? _Think_ for a minute. Emma knows she’s due in the next few weeks. Jessica disappears, you think our least favorite psychotic ginger isn’t going to figure out she’s been played, and start running a public records search for a birth certificate in the next month? You really want that leading her right to our doorstep?”

“He’s right,” Jessica told them. “Just--I don’t care where, somewhere far away from here. That’s all.”

“You’re right, Garcia, but I say we take her back with us,” Lucy said firmly, peeking back around the edge of the pilot’s chair. Since when could Lucy pilot the Lifeboat? “Denise said the next safehouse is ready, and we’d planned to move there after New Year’s anyway. So we move a bit early, and if Emma looks up that birth certificate, she’ll end up looking for us in the one place we’ll be nowhere near. Wyatt, I assume you’re staying with her?”

“Of course I’m staying,” Wyatt snapped.

“Then better we not leave the two of them alone unguarded. We’ve got Jiya there already too. Better to have everyone in one place.”

Flynn nodded at that. “Then when everyone’s able to go, we agree to get the hell out of Dodge as soon as possible.” 

“Everyone buckle up, and let’s get this jump done,” Lucy said. 

Flynn eyed Jessica while doing up his harness, sitting back in his seat. “Well, at least this won’t be the first time I’ve annoyed a woman in labor--sorry, but we’ll be taking your cell phone and your gun.” His lips twisted in a wry smile, and he quipped, “As I’ve got cause to know, work-release privileges have to be earned in this operation. But hey,” an awkward thumbs up, “welcome to the team?”

“You’re all charm,” Wyatt sighed, shaking his head and rolling his eyes. He reached for Jessica’s hand again, and she held on tight. Whatever happened, at least he was here for this, and he’d fight for her. That meant a more than she could say. “You’ll be OK,” he told her. The sudden jerk and surge of the Lifeboat told her they were in the timestream, and instinctively her other hand went to her stomach, hoping that nothing about this jump could hurt Dani. _We made it out of Rittenhouse. Looks like your dad and I will see you soon._

~~~~~~~~~~

He woke, opening his eyes to a blank and featureless white, and as things settled and his mind cleared, he realized that was from staring up at a ceiling. “Hey,” he heard from his right, and turned his head--or tried--until something stopped him. “Rufus, hold on--” Jiya came into his vision, leaning over him. He felt the pressure and warmth of her hand slipping into his, and squeezed, fingers slow and clumsy.

“What happened?” His tongue felt equally clumsy, and thick.

He felt the pressure of her sitting down beside him on the bed, leaning over him so that she could keep hold of his hand but he could also see her face. One hand braced on the other side of him, she looked down at him and smiled, though there was a bit of a tremble to her lips.

He hadn’t been able to look at her much in Oregon, too busy frantically kissing her, and then frantically avoiding Rittenhouse bullets, but he could see the small lines now around her eyes, the subtle difference to her features. Three years, she’d said. “You were shot in Hells Canyon,” she told him. “The bullet clipped your neck. But we got you out in time. You’re in the hospital. They managed to stitch you up, but you’re in a neck brace, just so you can’t turn your head for a few days and tear the stitches.”

He absorbed that, slower than he’d like, but it must be the last traces of the anesthetic still chugging around his brain. “Garcia?” he asked, furrowing his brow, remembering being in a heavy area of fire with him, the grunt of pain from Garcia right before he felt the stinging in his own neck.

There was a moment of hesitation from her. “He got shot too, in the chest. Had to have surgery too. But he’s fine.” She smiled wryly. “According to Denise, he was still arguing he’d be fine right until the surgeons knocked him out.”

He managed to laugh at that, though it was only one or two small heaves until it jostled his wound enough to sting a little. “Probably took horse tranquilizers to do it.” She laughed, and he reveled in the sound, because he’d thought for a week there that he might never hear the sound of Jiya Marri’s laughter again. “Though now he’ll never let me hear the end of it that he managed to stay conscious the whole time and I passed right out.” 

“He’s just glad to have you back,” she said, squeezing his hand even tighter. “We all are, Rufus.”

He smiled at her, but coming further out of the fog, his brain seized on one word. _Back?_ Did she mean “back” as in _hey, glad you’re back from the land of “we were worried you might die”_ , or...something else? He felt like he was mentally grasping, fumbling, trying to put a finger on what seemed not quite right.

Once that door cracked, he noticed something else. The voices out in the corridor, hearing the accent, something slow and syrupy. He knew a Southern black woman’s voice when he heard it. “Where are we?” he asked her.

Another of those minor hesitations, but she answered. “Tulane Hospital, New Orleans.”

Suspicion crystalized further in his mind from the way she looked at him, like she couldn’t believe he was here, like she couldn’t get enough of him. Something more than gratitude and joy at him having survived a gunshot and surgery. “New Orleans is a heck of a long way from Olema and the bunker.” She nodded, slowly, and he saw the flash of fear in her eyes, recognizing he was onto something. Yeah, of course he was. He was a scientist. Following evidence and piecing ideas together was his job, and these days, he was half detective too, trying to figure out Rittenhouse’s moves. Literally, in some cases. Investigating a murder scene, for one.

“Tell me,” he said, insistently. “I don’t...I don’t know exactly what’s going on, Jiya, but something’s off here. Did you bring me here so Emma wouldn’t find me or what?”

She sniffled at that, and the first tear slipped down her cheek. Oh, great. He’d been awake for like two minutes, and he’d already made her cry after she’d been lost in the 1880s for three years to boot. Worst boyfriend ever. He reached up with his free hand, cupping her cheek with it, feeling the dampness of the tear there. “Hey. Whatever it is--” A sudden fear seized him. The way she was acting, and the sudden move away from California--there had to be only one answer for that. “Jiya, who died?” Not Garcia, she’d said, but what about Lucy, or Wyatt? True, he was so pissed off at Wyatt, and him helping get Jiya back wasn’t enough to wipe that slate clean, but no chance did he wish the man dead. He was stupid and selfish and careless, but he didn’t deserve to die thanks to Rittenhouse.

Her dark eyes met his. She swallowed hard, but she didn’t look away. “You did,” she said, voice barely above a whisper. 

“Are we talking ‘Hey, Rufus, your heart stopped for a few minutes in the operating room and you scared the hell out of us, so technically you died,’ or what?” Nervously babbling as usual, but even as he did it, some part of him dived beneath the surface of it, knowing that couldn’t be what she meant, taking a harder look at what he could remember. 

He’d been shot in the neck and he’d gone unconscious almost immediately. Massive blood loss, right? He wasn’t a doctor, but that couldn’t be good. He knew that from hard, sad experience. Randall had been unconscious within about--what--ten seconds? Twenty? Time seemed meaningless in that horror, but it had been quick. And he’d died within minutes of getting to the hospital. Never even made it onto the table. Didn’t help they’d had to wait for an ambulance. 

They’d been hours from the Lifeboat, hadn’t they, leaving it back in that four-horse town--Bear Creek? Plus the bunker was a ways from the hospital too. How had they kept him stable for that long? “I...died for real.” He tried to nod, accepting that had to be the truth, however improbable, but the neck brace stopped him. “And since I’m not, you know, Bayek of Siwa,” given he and Jiya had been playing “Assassin’s Creed: Origins” in the bunker in the days prior to Jessica getting all backstabby and kidnappy, “you couldn’t just reload the saved game and try again. So...Jiya, how am I here? How am I alive?”

She kept her grip on his hand, and didn’t look away. “This isn’t going to be easy to hear, Rufus, I’m sorry.”

“Easier than being dead, I guess?” A weak quip, but it was the best one he had right now.

“It’s Sunday, November 18th. We brought you here yesterday. Lucy tells me that the mission to Hells Canyon left on--”

“May 12th, yes.” The math wasn’t exactly hard. “It’s been six months. How did you…”

She sat back, shifting by his side so she didn’t have to lean over him, but carefully keeping so that he could see her face, which he appreciated. He needed to look at her as she said this, because it was impossible, but somehow it was possible. Six months? “I know you’ll have questions. But it’ll be easier if you just let me explain.”

“All right.” He’d do his best to shut up and listen.

“You died.” She started off with that, hammer-blunt. “We had to leave you, Rufus Only four seats in the Lifeboat, and there was more gunfire--we figured it was Rittenhouse. So we ran. We had to run. And believe me, it hurt like hell for me to leave you there. Only two casualties among the miners that we saw, so--at least we prevented the massacre.” She gave a sad smile. “No record of it, though, at least not one easily found. Thirty-four Chinese men get killed by white guys, history at least acknowledges it. Two? That’s just another Tuesday in the Old West.”

“I’m sorry. I know they were your friends.” Much as he’d promised himself he wouldn’t interrupt, that one did need to be said. The fluent Chinese, and the easily familiarity she’d had with Chea Po in particular, made that obvious. 

“We got back. Tried to process what had just happened. Denise got ready to go haul Garcia off to the hospital once she got his wound stabilized. Then--another Lifeboat showed up. A different one. And Lucy and Wyatt stepped out. They looked different. Honestly, picture Lucy as Ripley and Wyatt as Bear Grylls, OK? They said they were from a few years down the road. That we would need you, and that we could get you back. They gave us the plans to the Lifeboat that would let us go back to a place we already had been or existed---they called it the ‘Lifeline’. Then...then they left. Didn’t want to say too much and change history, I’d think. But from how rough they looked, things went really bad in their timeline.”

She eyed him carefully, as if he were a crate of TNT, wondering if he was about to explode. 

He would have nodded for her to continue, but he couldn’t. So he squeezed her hand tighter. “I’m with you so far.” Logically, anyway. Emotionally, the full weight of that would hit soon enough. For now he did his best to hold that at bay. The revelation he’d been for-real dead was bad enough.

“So we got to work. It took months to rebuild the Lifeboat, because you saw how thrashed it was after sitting out in the elements for a hundred and thirty years. We...rebuilt it. Rebuilt the team along the way, I guess. We were a mess too when we came back. I lost you, right when I got you back. Lucy lost her mom, even if she was a Rittenpsycho. Wyatt had a lot to make up for. Garcia...anyway.” What was the omission there? “We kept working on the Lifeboat, then installing the Lifeline. Did some missions along the way. Emma’s a little more aggressive in her tactics, but we’ve kept up with her so far. We finally finished the Lifeline a few weeks ago and tested it, and...we made the plan to come get you. Evacuate you as quickly as we could, avoid our past selves, and get you here to the hospital.”

“Looks like it worked.”

She nodded, slowly and carefully. “It did. They say you’ll be ready to go home in a day or two.” She reached out, caressed his cheek, sweeping the line of his jaw with a slow stroke of her thumb. “I can’t believe you’re here,” she said, voice thick and choked again. “It’s been…”

She’d waited for him for three years, watched him die, and then waited another six months simply for the chance to save his life. The full force of that hit him, and he had to wonder if he was worth that. If anyone was worth that. But he would have waited for her. A whole jumble of things were at war in him. Awe, fear, anger, exhaustion, confusion--too much all at once. It had been non-stop from the moment he woke up with Jiya gone and Wyatt admitting awkwardly that Jessica had kidnapped her at gunpoint. “Wyatt?” he asked carefully.

“Up to you how you want to deal with him, because I get it, the last you remember is how much he helped cause it,” she answered, equally careful. “He’s changed. After I basically read him the riot act on his bullshit back in July.”

“You know, I am _really_ sorry I missed that.” He would have loved to see it, and maybe even join in. 

“Um--let’s see. Jessica realized she’d basically been part of creepy brainwashing, and she found us. Turned double agent. She’s...ah...actually just down the hall right now, having the baby. Lucy, Garcia, and Wyatt went to go get her a few hours ago.” Another of those careful, assessing glances, as if waiting to see if he’d have a stroke and die from rage about it.

Good for them. They got the happy ending, and he got six months in the land of the dead, with Jiya mourning him, after three years abandoned in the past. And none of it should ever have happened. Maybe they’d all had time to work through their issues with Wyatt and Jessica, but he sure as hell hadn’t. “No offense, but I’m not really into Wyatt and Jessica’s soap opera right now, and that includes their baby drama.”

“Fair enough. But I wanted you to know what’s up.” She looked at him, gaze level and fierce and intent. “Whatever you decide about them, whether you want to trust them or not, I’ve got your back.”

“I think I’m gonna need to focus first on getting better,” he said tiredly. “Then we can worry about the rest.” Something struck him then.

“Uh...let’s see. Lucy and Garcia are a thing, finally.”

Now that was some drama he was glad to hear had ended. Watching those idiots circle around it for months on end got ridiculous. “About time he opened his mouth for something besides sarcasm.”

Jiya rolled her eyes, but she was smiling as she did it. “You probably can’t have them for another couple days, but I brought you these.” She held up the familiar blue-and-white package with the red lettering.

“Chocodiles!” He couldn’t resist a grin himself. “There’s my girl.” 

Her eyes were a bit too bright with tears still, but she laughed all the same. “Well, we did come back from a mission. It _is_ tradition. I’ll even watch ‘The A-Team’ with you.”

“You’re a changed woman, Jiya Marri, huh?” He said it jokingly, but then it struck him that he’d hit the nail on the head. “Hey. I’m sorry. But I love you, Jiya, you know that? I love you so much. When I thought I’d lost you...I wanted to...to just go berserk. Do I don’t even know what. Go shoot Wyatt, maybe. Go kill Jessica--again? This whole ‘were people dead or not’ thing is getting weird. Thanks, time travel.”

“I wanted to kill them when I lost you,” she said huskily.

She wasn’t the same woman who’d been kidnapped. But chances were, even though the blackout on that rocky hillside in Hells Canyon was only about fifteen minutes ago to him, he wasn’t the same either. He’d died. He’d been betrayed by someone he thought was a friend, and backstabbed by another being a selfish ass. That had to change things. “I cried myself to sleep the nights we were looking for you.”

“I did that a lot too for the first six months. Sometimes still after that. I’d dream of you and…” He saw her shoulders hitch in another rolling, half-suppressed sob.

“Jiya, I would have gone anywhere to get you back. Some missed time? That’s...that’s nothing.”

She visibly steadied herself again. “There’s more.”

“Oh God, don’t tell me you’re pregnant, there’s _enough_ pregnant drama, and how would that have even happened? I mean, you said there was nobody else in the last three years, so it’s not like you would have gotten another boyfriend in six months when you were planning to get me back, and seriously, I just need to shut up now.” 

She inhaled, obviously bracing herself, breathed out slowly. “I am Jiya Marri.”

“Not sure who else would you be?”

“Something happened. We went on a mission a month after we...lost you.” He had to admit appreciating she didn’t use the word _died_ , given he was still getting used to the idea. “1733, we had to--anyway, the mission itself doesn’t matter. You can read the reports later if you want. But...I’m sorry, Rufus. There’s no easy way to put this. I’m not the Jiya you knew. Not exactly. We’re from another timeline that apparently got erased while we were in 1733, and when we jumped back to 2018, we landed here. I’m not sure exactly how or why we came back and they didn’t. It’s a very similar timeline, given a lot of the missions we were on this year match up according to Connor and Denise, and we were on the exact same mission to 1733 as the Lucy, Garcia, Jiya, and Wyatt that you knew. But…”

“But not the same.” Now his mind was officially blown. “Were we…”

“Yes. Yes, we were together. Roughly about the same timeline--uh--romantically, I mean, we got together right about that same time. Sounds like that’s about...99% the same, maybe?”

But she wasn’t quite the woman he’d gone to Hells Canyon to find. The one he’d kissed so frantically on that gravel beach. The one who remembered their life together and all those little details. Apparently he hadn’t saved her. “What’s different?” he asked carefully.

“For me? I ended up in San Francisco in 1885, not Oregon in 1884. I was a games dealer and saloon worker at a place called the Bison Horn, on the edge of Chinatown. I did learn to speak Chinese--Mandarin, anyway. But I was gone for three years in the 1880s after Jessica kidnapped me. Everything there happened just the same. And I...you got hurt on a mission to Chicago in 1931 because Garcia got Capone to try to kill you...”

“Excuse me? Garcia Flynn tried to get Al Capone to kill me exactly _why_?” Wyatt might be a fuck-up, but at least it was unintentional. Why in hell would his own teammate deliberately try to get him killed? “Oh Jesus Christ on a piece of toast, don’t tell me that he is, or was, Rittenhouse too?” What kind of bizarro world had he awoken to here?

“No! Allah, no, he hates Rittenhouse more than any of us.” She calmed down. “All right. The Garcia I know, he was an NSA asset. That tracks with what happened here, the man you know--knew. But mine? He had a wife and daughter. He kicked the wrong rock and uncovered Rittenhouse, and they killed his family for it, tried to kill him. He escaped, some Lucy from the future apparently gave him intel about the Lifeboat and Rittenhouse, he hid out for two years, swore vengeance, I guess, and stormed Mason Industries. Stole the Lifeboat. Everything up until we took out most of Rittenhouse thanks to Ethan Cahill turning double agent was actually us chasing Flynn, because he was pretty much taking a flamethrower to history to try to eliminate Rittenhouse. ”

“Garcia Flynn. You’re telling me the dude who can’t even tell Lucy he likes her about her was married, had a kid, and went crazy on Rittenhouse?” But then--he’d seen the man at work. Awkward and well-meaning and snarky as he could be, in the field Garcia Flynn was unquestionably covert ops. Rufus had seen him shoot a Rittenhouse agent without blinking, more than once. He’d torn up Salem, fighting with ridiculously outdated weaponry and still mowing people down efficiently and ruthlessly to save Lucy’s life. Imagining exactly how batshit Garcia might go if someone killed Lucy and a daughter he’d had with her, and exactly how wide a swath of destruction one murderous genius giant of a spy-soldier could burn through history if he chose, he could imagine it. It wasn’t a pretty picture. “So we were enemies.” They’d never been friends in that timeline. He’d never given the man a world of crap for his hopeless crush on Lucy, never drank with him and talked about sci-fi, a tipsy Garcia gushing about Star Wars because it was good to have _someone_ appreciate it if Jiya couldn’t. The man had deliberately tried to kill him, from what Jiya said. 

“Sort of? We were unknowingly working for Rittenhouse because Connor had sold out to them. He didn’t tell the Feds about Rittenhouse immediately in my timeline like he did with yours. He let Garcia take the fall for the whole thing, though honestly, he really didn’t need help making himself look bad. Emma--Emma still sucks, by the way. She’s been Rittenhouse all along. Once we all realized what was what and started working with Flynn, took out most of Rittenhouse thanks to Ethan, things changed. You and Garcia were...becoming friends by the time Jessica took me,” Jiya offered, and he could see from her anxious gaze that she hoped it helped. “He’d been actually with us, on the team, for about three and a half, four months by then. You trusted him enough to work with him on missions. Trusted him enough to ask him to go with you to rescue me, from what Wyatt said.” 

“But he tried to get me killed. Because I was a Lifeboat pilot, I’m assuming.” So he’d lost Wyatt as a friend with the backstabbing idiocy, lost the Jiya he remembered and not just because of three years away, and lost the Garcia who had been his friend. Suddenly he wanted nothing more than to just lie there and cry himself sick. Wasn’t survival after a near-death experience, or a full-death experience in his case, supposed to be a happy thing? Wasn’t he supposed to be grateful, rather than overwhelmed and tired? 

“You’ve been through a lot,” Jiya said softly, and he saw the uncertainty on her face. “Do you want to rest, or…”

Some part of him wanted to be alone right now, stunned by the revelations. He’d lost Jiya forever. His Jiya, anyway. But seeing the face there above him, so familiar and beloved, hurt even more in a bewildering way. “You lost your Rufus too. You knew I wasn’t him. But you still spent six months trying to get me back.”

“How could I do anything different? I love you, Rufus Carlin. And if you don’t want...me, the me that there is now, I understand. Maybe we need to take time to figure things out. But...I’m glad you’re alive.”

She wasn’t the woman he’d kissed on that beach. But she loved him. He loved her, and when he looked at her, he couldn’t see her as anyone but Jiya. And for as long as he’d wanted her, how wonderful it had been to love her, could he really throw that away? Especially since he knew things were damaged with Wyatt, and apparently things were super weird with Garcia, and he didn’t want to push away the one person he felt he could, should be able to trust implicitly. “99% the same, you said? What’s the 1% difference? Have you finally gotten better taste in movies?”

“Hey, I’m not the one who’s stuck in the ‘80s!” Just like it had been, and he found himself smiling, even as he ended up with some ugly sobs himself, overwhelmed by it all, and he couldn’t hold it back. Right now, he didn’t want to be alone, didn’t want to push her away out of fear. She’d been lost and he went to get her, even in that other timeline, and he’d been dead, and she’d come to get him, despite him being not quite the same man, and if that didn’t say what needed to be said, what did? Did it all need to be perfectly the same? Neither of them would have come back from that mission the same either. 

When he could finally find his voice again, he mustered his courage. “You missed three years, and now I’ve missed six months. And I guess we’re both a little different. So we’ll both have some catching up to do now. But...we’ve missed so much time already. I don’t want to waste more of it. I love you and you love me, whatever timeline, and we both fought to get each other back. Isn’t that what matters most?” Maybe that was getting into more of the “God and fate” stuff that he’d rolled his eyes at for so long, maybe it was simply scientific probability, but it felt right. “So, uh, you want to find the controls to raise the head of this bed, maybe kiss me because I can’t kiss you as easily right now myself with this stupid neck brace, and I _really_ want to kiss you, and then we’ll watch some ‘ALF’?

Her smile was so familiar, and he’d wanted so much to see it again, and it took his breath away. “Sounds perfect,” she whispered, giving his hand another squeeze.


	28. 3x07: Gold Mountain (Lucy/Jessica/Jiya, New Orleans, Louisiana, November 2018)

It had been a frenzy of activity from the moment they jumped to Hells Canyon, an endlessly long night at the hospital of eating junk food and dozing in uncomfortable chairs. Garcia and Wyatt took a walk to a grocery store a half-mile away to buy a box of Chocodiles for Jiya for when Rufus woke up. Garcia hadn’t asked Jiya to explain exactly what chocolate-covered Twinkies meant, simply doing it, but Lucy had to imagine Wyatt likely explained on the way. Chocodiles delivered, they kept waiting. 

She, Garcia, and left shortly before dawn Jiya once Rufus was in the recovery room, groggily awake but not conscious yet. The moment he really, truly woke up, aware and alert, should be hers alone. She’d waited so long for it, fought so hard for it. There would be time later for them all to see their friend. 

After showers and brief naps at the safehouse, they’d gotten a jubilant text from Jiya that Rufus was awake. Nothing yet about whether she’d broken the news about his six-month vacation from the world of the living, let alone the timeline swap. But that would be hers by rights also. Breathing a sigh of relief, they’d been about ready to sit down to lunch with Denise and Connor when another text hit Wyatt’s phone, and Wyatt freaked out.

Another four hours later, Jessica had been safely delivered to the hospital. They had two young Rittenhouse agents safely bound and stowed and probably drugged in the attic--which came across as oh-so-weirdly Bronte, or maybe VC Andrews for the appropriate Southern Gothic. But attic it was, as they didn’t have a basement given so much of southern Louisiana was barely above the waterline. At that point, Connor took over handling the Lifeboat and checking it over thoroughly after its Lifeline sojourn, running a full diagnostic. Denise took over the necessary calls to Washington about their new prisoners. Lucy had to agree with Jessica: they hadn’t done anything yet. They didn’t need to disappear down a federal black hole forever. But adrenaline still firing, and unable to settle down, she and Garcia shrugged, grabbed the grocery list--expanded to include feeding Rufus, whose metabolism Lucy had always envied, and that felt like a triumph--and headed to Rouses.

The rich smell of chicory coffee filled the air since she’d started the coffee pot as they unloaded the bags. It was one of the things she admittedly learned to love about this place, along with throwing a dash of cinnamon in. Denise headed in, and Lucy held up the pot in a silent offer. Denise nodded, and she poured another cup, sliding it over to her. About an hour before she headed out to go see Michelle, Mark, and Olivia at their place about four miles away, Lucy estimated. “You did good work,” she told them, joining their little party of leaning on the counter and enjoying a good cup of coffee. “Great work, really.”

“Do you want to get the mission report from Garcia and me?” Lucy asked. “The others are busy, so it might be a while, and I imagine you probably want to get details while they’re fresh.”

Denise took a hefty swig from the coffee mug. “No, that’ll keep.” There was a slight, pleased smile on her face as she looked at them. “You got Rufus back, and Jessica’s brought in some intel and two agents to interrogate. It’s a really good day. The best win this task force has had in a year and a half. We should enjoy that feeling. Let’s not reduce that to a mission report just yet.”

“Now, I would have figured capturing me was a great day for you too---the other you,” Garcia joked drolly. “You did send in at least DHS eight agents to take me down. In a weird way, I’m honored.” He raised his coffee mug in a wry salute.

Denise sighed, wrapping her hands around her mug, holding it close to her chest. “So apparently I couldn’t see the forest for the trees then, Garcia. No, I couldn’t fully trust you, I think you have to agree on that. I’m guessing I also wasn’t in a forgiving mood after everything we’d just been through, and how narrowly my team avoided total disaster. But you did deserve better than what I ordered. You’d already been betrayed and burned by the NSA, and then, yes, DHS screwed you too. Hopefully the fact I eventually got you out and let you join the fight again made up for it. At least somewhat. I can’t give you back those six months, but I am sorry.”

He obviously swallowed wrong, because he coughed and sputtered. Tapping his chest with a fist, he managed, “That wasn’t...Denise, seriously, I was just kidding.” He sighed, running a hand awkwardly through his hair. “I deserved six months in prison. A lot more, really.” She knew that. If it hadn’t been for Rittenhouse still being out there, he would have gone quietly into the dark, accepted it as his due.

Lucy held her tongue, barely daring to breathe, let alone move, not wanting to interrupt the moment between them. “Maybe neither of us was at our best in that other timeline. Yes, I’ve heard your record. You’ve been pretty honest about it. But I’ve seen you these last five months. So I think I’ve had a fair chance to assess you. And I’m proud of you, Garcia Flynn. You’re a damn good agent, and a damn good man.”

Lucy glanced over at him, willing him with every fiber of her being to just shut up and take it, to not come back with flat denial or a wry quip to cover the self-loathing. She remembered how much it had meant for Denise to say that she’d be proud to have a daughter like Lucy, what a balm it had been to all those wounds in her soul from her own mother. He needed to hear that forgiveness and praise, and he needed to be able to accept it. His hand went white-knuckled on the handle of his coffee mug, and he looked away from Denise, his entire body tight as if braced for an attack, and then slowly relaxing. “Thank you,” he said finally with a nod of acknowledgment, voice very quiet. Then he cleared his throat, awkwardly transitioning to another topic, because of course he would. “We’ll likely need to move as soon as Rufus and Jessica are able. I doubt he’s stupid enough to take out a birth announcement, but Jessica and Wyatt’s daughter will have a birth certificate with the New Orleans registrar, and if Emma goes looking through public records for it to find us, we may have a problem.”

“She’ll have a birth certificate,” Denise agreed, “but I can certainly prevent that from making its way to the parish registrar for a while.” She eyed him, corner of her mouth turning up in wry amusement. “You’re good at waving that NSA badge as a bluff, Garcia, but you haven’t been a federal agent for thirty years like me. If I tell Tulane Hospital that it’s a matter of DHS/NSA security that a particular birth certificate stays off public record for the time being, that they’re a family in witness protection that we’re relocating, they’ll certainly cooperate. We can move in a couple of months like we’d planned. Give Rufus time to recuperate, time for him and Jiya to reconnect. Let Wyatt and Jessica figure things out, especially with a newborn.” 

“Sounds like we could all use the downtime to recover,” Lucy had to agree with her, hiding a smile at Garcia’s sheepish look of acknowledgment that yes, he’d just been schooled. “It’s been a rough six months.” They’d gone so hard, but they’d had to, and now that they’d saved Rufus, the next mountain was right there for the climbing, because Emma and Rittenhouse still had to be tackled.

“It has.” Denise finished her coffee and turned to put her mug in the sink. “Wyatt and Jiya are right where they need to be. And of course Connor’s out in the shed caring for his own baby. So I really think you two should take the night off.”

“We were planning to watch a movie,” she answered, nodding in agreement. Or maybe the Great British Baking Show. Something fluffy and feel-good sounded like just the right thing. They’d bought more popcorn at the grocery store for a night in.

Denise raised an eyebrow. “No, I mean that you should _take the night off_. There’s nothing here that needs your attention tonight. Go get some dinner, and find some place to stay tonight--actually, the next few nights in town, until Rufus and Jessica are ready to come home. You’re in a relationship now--yes, we’ve all noticed, though thank you for being low-key about it--and I know you haven’t had much time to yourselves, or any privacy in this place. You need some of that. So, in short? I’ll expect to see you back here tomorrow at one, Agent Flynn, Doctor Preston, because we have two enemy agents to interrogate, but unless I call you for an emergency, do not show up before that.” 

Garcia looked awkwardly adorable blushing like a schoolboy, but as usual, he managed a quip. “Mission orders acknowledged, ma’am. We’ll go pack.”

She blushed hotly herself or less being told to go have good sex, but her gratitude beat that out. They would have had to ask Denise for that sooner or later, once the mission to get Rufus back was over. But she’d beaten them to it by sensing they needed it, and offering. As a married woman herself, balancing her job and her relationship, she apparently understood. _Thank you,_ she mouthed silently, putting her mug in the sink. Denise winked in return, and in that, Lucy remembered a young Dhriti Sirivastava, and Lucy telling her to follow her heart, that Michelle would be worth the wait. Looked like Denise was returning the favor by playing Aphrodite herself. 

Packing a few things for overnight, because they’d be back tomorrow and she could grab more then, they didn’t ask more questions or give Denise a chance to rethink it. The tension lasted about three minutes until they hit the highway east towards New Orleans, and he asked, tone light and teasing, “So, ah, English slang question...tell me, if you’re being banished to go have privacy yourself rather than so others can, is that still being ‘sexiled’?”

She didn’t risk taking her eyes off the road to look at him, much as she wanted to, but she couldn’t help snorting with laughter all the same. “You know, I’m really not sure. But of course you and I would have to do even that differently.”

He laughed himself at that, and reached over to briefly take her hand in his, only a few seconds of contact so that she could get back to driving with both hands. Good as that felt, she felt the giddy anticipation rolling through her, recognizing that touch was only the merest taste, and finally they could have it all. 

She debated saying to hell with dinner and hustling him right into a hotel room, but she wanted those delicious last moments of anticipation, enjoying the time with him, as he’d said as a flippant joke, eating food in each others’ company and doing social things. _Besides, we’re likely going to burn some calories._ They’d missed lunch thanks to their detour to Kansas, as her stomach reminded her with a sudden grumble.

They checked into a nice hotel downtown--historic of course, and she had to smile at him making that effort to find one--getting the desk to hold their bags because if they went upstairs now, she had the sense they wouldn’t be coming back down again, and headed out into the late afternoon. 

Sated after a feast at a Creole restaurant, not bothering to think about the hit to her wallet--one good thing about this whole mission was her living expenses had been virtually zero for quite a while--walking close by him, it felt good. Like they were any other ordinary couple out for a Saturday night on the town, without the weight of both history and the future on their shoulders.

Maybe it was in that spirit, and knowing in her mind and heart that she didn’t need to rush, that he’d want her as much in an hour or so, that they kept the stroll back towards the hotel at a leisurely pace. He paused, looking at a sign for a jazz/RnB cabaret. “Music and a drink...maybe tomorrow night, though?” The look in his eyes did certain things to her, a sudden tightness both in her chest and between her thighs. 

Music and a drink had been a good fresh start for them at Carrie’s juke joint, and she couldn’t help but smile at the memory. They’d come a long way even since then. “That sounds good. But yes, tomorrow night.” Their pace picked up a bit for the last block or so back towards the hotel. Exchanging glances, slight smiles, small brushes of their hands, the giddy swoop of anticipating rising within her, higher and higher. She wished, a bit absurdly, that her legs were longer, but at least he didn’t get impatient enough to either scoop her up or throw her over his shoulder. Maybe she wouldn’t have objected if he had. 

Once they were inside the room, the door closed and locked behind him, she took in a deep breath, putting down her bag on a blue-upholstered bench. Somehow she’d imagined she and Garcia might have to steal a night together out on a mission if they wanted any privacy for their first time, but she was glad it was like this. She’d had her night in Hollywood with Wyatt, but that--appropriately enough--felt now that it had been like a dramatic scene from a movie. They’d both been seduced by glamour, by the overwhelming romantic charms of the time and place and the danger and the adrenaline. She could almost hear the swell of an orchestra as she and Wyatt had leaned in to kiss. It had been lush, irresistible, a deliriously beautiful dream that filled her loneliness so wonderfully for that night. But in the end, it was only a dream, a fantasy, that fizzled out in hours. She slept alone the next night with the harsh reality, wounded arm from Salem, wounded heart from Wyatt. With Wyatt, it was sudden leaps on missions, dramatic and heart-seizing, but dangerous and unstable. She could always rely on him to have her back on missions, but she’d never sat up all night talking and laughing with him about small things. Even without Jessica coming back, they likely never would have lasted.

This wasn’t Golden Age Hollywood, or Tsarskoye Selo, or anywhere else. It was 2018, in a nice hotel room but something ordinary and recognizable, and the man beside her in his ordinary jeans and sweater was the same man she’d wake up next to tomorrow morning, and for, she prayed, a long time to come. This was the next piece of something simple and reassuringly normal they’d gradually built between them, and would continue to build, not a single over-the-top explosive moment in time. 

She turned back, turned to him, seeing him already there right behind her, bending down to kiss her. God, he kissed her like a man starving, answering the same hunger sparking within her. So much held back, because it felt like they’d both recognized neither of them wanted to wander too far into something they couldn’t finish. The makeouts had been amazing and frustrating all at once. She’d had the irreverent thought that she finally was going through the period of frustrated sexual denial she’d skipped as a teen, and apparently he had too. 

She wanted all of it right then, kissing him, her hands diving underneath the hem of his sweater and impatiently yanking the undershirt beneath from his jeans so she could touch him, fingers splayed over warm skin, feeling the muscles of his abdomen tense beneath her touch. Wanting and needing and finally _having_ ; not enough, though, not nearly enough, so clearly the shirt had to go, and clumsy as she made it trying to get both sweater and undershirt in one fell swoop, he helped, tugging them over his head and tossing them towards his bag on the floor.

She took the sight of him in for an instant, broad shoulders and chest, the scattering of dark hair, the scars, and a part of her wanted to stand there and look at him endlessly. But he was no statue in a museum, merely there to be admired, and she reached out, reached up, hands on those shoulders, running them down his chest. He gave a short, impatient growl. “You’re--this is--but I swear, you are so Goddamn _short_ , Lucy,” hands gripping her by the hips, lifting her up in an easy effortless swoop. She let out a breathless laugh at it, right before he kissed her, still holding her up. Arms around his neck, thighs pressed against his hips to help hold herself steady, and this was good, no more awkward craning to try to kiss him, all careful and restrained.

These past months, she’d come to know him so well. Yes, he was sweet and supportive and sincere with her, and with others irreverent, smart, wickedly funny, and all too often awkward. But she’d known there was more to him than that. There was that part of him that was fierce and formidable and relentless and intense. A fighter. A time traveling killer. The man who’d threatened her at the World’s Fair both was and wasn’t the same man as the one who’d pushed through his wounds to hold her while she cried in that Chinatown alley. 

He’d put things back into balance, into boundaries, that was all. But that other part of him was still there, the part that let him fight despite all the setbacks and the pain. She could take that part of him, the steel along with the sweetness, because it was in her too. It always had been. She only hadn’t let herself admit it, burying it under anxiety and apologies and fear, never wanting to offend. But she’d had to find that rock solid core in order to stand and fight back in this war, and so she had.

She knew that darker, ferocious part of Garcia Flynn, and unlike in Lakehurst, she wasn’t afraid of this man. He’d harnessed that now, and made it a strength rather than a weakness. She could keep pace with him on it too. She kissed him back, breaking off to trail her lips over his jaw, teeth fastening for a moment in his earlobe. “Bed?” she whispered in his ear.

He obliged, carrying her over, laying her down gently on the coverlet, leaning over her on one hand, looking down at her. Feeling the taut restraint there in him at war with the overwhelming need, she had the sense that if she said the word he would have forced himself to slow down, touched her with all the gentleness and patience he had, and damn, how she wanted that. Wanted to strip him slowly, wanted to let him do the same to her, wanted to make it last, wanted to watch him gradually come undone. But she’d waited, he’d waited, and honestly, right now the last thing she wanted was to wait any longer.

So she tugged him down beside her on the bed, and it wasn’t exactly the most graceful for either of them trying to yank clothes off in as big a hurry as possible. She wasn’t sure her bra didn’t end up behind the nightstand when she carelessly threw it. But that was future Lucy’s problem, and she didn’t mean the Lara Croft version of herself, or whatever version had shown up in Brazil. 

Restlessly running her hands over him, wanting to touch him, claim him as hers, everywhere at once, meant she couldn’t settle anywhere in particular. Her own skin felt alight, every nerve tingling from him doing the same to her, those large, callused hands stroking and caressing, a little unsteady, feeling the press of him against her, craving as much of his skin against hers as she could get. She kissed him again; the air between them was heightened, charged, the current running between them undeniable. Though it always had been, right from the start. There was something between them, some unbreakable and unshakable bond, a magnetic pull. _Quite the team_ , he’d said once. This was simply another piece of that.

Then suddenly he drew back from her for a moment, and she felt the loss, her heart still racing. She saw him breathe in deeply as if steadying himself, felt the rise and fall of his chest underneath her hand. “It’s been...a long time for me, Lucy.” He glanced at her almost shyly, sidelong beneath those unfairly long dark lashes he had. Between that and the way he had lost himself in the moment to the point his accent thickened, her name with that drawn-out vowel-- _Loocy_ \--she thought it was honestly a bit unfair for him to be able to do that to her with words and looks alone, and then touch her besides. 

Then what he’d actually said sunk in through the haze of sheer arousal. It had been four years for him, and with this so exciting and new between them besides, no, he might not last that long. Of course, Garcia being Garcia with guilt sized to match his own ridiculously giant self, he would have to make that into some kind of personal failing rather than something normal. 

She could be kind, tell him that it didn’t matter because there would be other times. She could be sweet, confess that all that mattered was the two of them being together, right here and right now. She could tease him, promise that she’d make sure he made it up to her. She could be wryly heartfelt, say that the only sex she’d had in the last four years herself was twice with Wyatt nearly a year ago, so she was fairly rusty too. 

But instead she took his hand in hers, guiding it in between her thighs, letting him feel exactly how wet she was right now. Looked directly at those deep green eyes, seeing them go wide, how dark they were already with desire. She smiled a knowing, devil-may-care smile, telling him, “I don’t think how long it lasts will be a problem.” Shocked and thrilled with herself, with whatever unfamiliar impulse took over and spurred her on to being that shamelessly bold. They’d first encountered each other on the airfield in New Jersey, but she’d been terrified by him and he’d been confused by her. It felt like it was the next mission in DC that they truly met and saw each others’ measure for the first time, in that sharp, aggressive back-and-forth where neither of them gave each other any quarter. They’d always been able to be more or less honest with each other, ever since. She couldn’t say they’d been enemies--for so long they were allies who kept missing the boat, so to speak. But they’d been in opposition to begin, so right from the first, she’d never had to hold back on him, never carefully curated or hid or shaped herself to please him, to not offend. He’d done the same with her. In a way, maybe she’d always been shameless with him.

He replied to that with a finger slipping in further to find and stroke her clit, and as she gasped, biting her lip, letting go of his hand, thighs instinctively tightening to hold the pressure just _there_ , she saw his answering pleased smirk.

She paid him right back for it, hand sliding down his stomach, curling her fingers around him. Hot and hard and silky under her touch, giving the length of him a slow sweep with her thumb, and she watched his face as she did it, how his eyes slid half-closed, felt the shudder go down his spine, the slight buck of his hips against her touch.

He leaned in at that, kissing her, demanding and desperate all at once, and now it was like the dam had finally burst with a rushing roar, and neither of them could hold back, caught up and helplessly tumbled and carried along by the force of surging waters far too strong to fight. Not a bad metaphor, as she rolled onto her back, tugging him over her with her free hand, guiding him into her with the other, because it felt like all she could do to breathe.

He paused, looking down at her, and she nodded. Then there was the inevitable adjustment as he eased into her, trying to figure out exactly how this worked for them, and she caught him around his thighs with her legs, opening to him just that bit further, pulling him in deeper. Hearing the soft groan he made at that, the way he looked at her, it felt like everything was far too much, and still somehow not enough, and it was perfect.

Moving with him, both of them already instinctively seeking the right rhythm, hesitant at first and with greater certainty, seeking to go harder, deeper. She wrapped her arms around him, pulled him down to her from where he’d braced up on his hands, needing him closer, wanting the feel of his skin on hers as much as possible. He might grumble about her being so short, but from her perspective, he was too damn tall, and that had the effect of her face ending up level with his shoulders. She wished she could see his face. But instead, she saw the scar from Emma’s bullet and the surgery to fix the damage, large and purple and puckered, healing slowly. She took one hand from his back, touching the scar softly, a silent sort of acknowledgment of that day, how close she’d come to losing him, how close he’d come to losing her, before they could ever do more than dream of something like this except as a momentary guilty fantasy.

Sliding the hand down his arm, she waited, and he obliged, lifting his hand enough from the mattress for her to slip her hand into his, lacing their fingers, holding on tightly. Yes, that was better. He made a low, hoarse sound in his throat at that, and she felt the brush of his lips against her brow, felt the tension spiraling tighter and tighter in her at the tenderness alongside the fierce, insistent rhythm they’d set.

 _There_ , that finally did it, and she couldn’t help a strangled moan as they found just the right angle, free hand clutching at his shoulder as she surged up against him, swept away in the tidal wave of release crashing over her. It didn’t take him much longer after that, and she thought he said her name, fingers clutching hers even more tightly as he rode out the last few ragged thrusts, his breath stirring against her hair, coming in harsh pants much the same as hers.

Eventually, they gathered at least a couple wits back together. He was enough of a gentleman to head to the bathroom and get a towel to get them cleaned up. Worn out still from two missions, multiple jumps, and lack of sleep, she wished she could lie there and talk, look at him, but she felt herself fading fast. It was hard enough to turn back the covers and slide underneath them. She felt the sleepy lassitude in him too as he gathered her in close, and she nuzzled his neck, sighing as she let herself fall asleep, safe and comforted.

She woke sometime in the night, and facing the window as she was, she realized with an awkward rush of embarrassment they’d been in such a hurry they hadn’t even closed the curtains. She could see the faint wash of the stars even against the never-ending light of a city at night. But they were on the sixth floor, and the neighboring buildings weren’t that tall, so nobody could have gotten a show. That was a relief.

He stirred beside her, arm tightening around her for a second. “ _Koliko je sati?_ ” Voice a little groggy, and then it obviously snapped into place for him a bit more, because he repeated himself in English: “What time is it?” She’d understood the Croatian, but her still-awakening brain struggled for it, so she appreciated he’d done the English anyway.

She reached over and turned on the lamp, then checking her phone. “Just after 3 AM.” Turning back over just in time to see his wince, she smiled. “Looks like we crashed out for a good 8 hours, huh?”

He returned the half-sheepish smile. The sharpest edge was off the hunger for him, the frustrated denial sated, but by no means had it gone away. She reached out, touched his cheek, weighing the moment, moving in closer to kiss him.

Apparently his thoughts turned in the same direction, because as he kissed her, she felt it in him too. But this time it was a steady flow rather than the roaring rapids they’d unleashed the first time. His hand swept down her side in a slow caress, lingering on the flare of her hip, thumb stroking her skin there. Giving her that smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes and showed off those dimples, and the look in his eyes that promised all sorts of wickedness. Usually she saw that expression when he was about to go do something dramatic on a mission.

He kissed her, lips, jaw, throat, collarbone, and she eagerly pushed back the covers. Held her breath for a moment, sensing where he’d go next, and about ready to scream when he held up. He glanced up, probably very well aware what he was doing to her, and enjoying it. “So impatient. We have time.”

“Not if I murder you.” Yes, he’d probably been a bad influence, because sarcasm and threats hadn’t been good girl Lucy Preston. She couldn’t be sorry, though.

He laughed at that, one of those full-throated sounds of rich amusement, rather than the sarcastic snort she often heard, and she loved the sound of it. “Worth it.” He caught her fingers in his, bringing their linked hands up, kissing the back of her hand. That look softened, turned to that familiar expression that caught her breath from how he looked at her. “Tell me what you like. Or show me, if that’s better.” Had anyone ever asked that? They’d largely assumed. 

It might have been a few years, but clearly, he had forgotten nothing. He was right, though. With that first frenzy of need burned off, now there was time savor every instant of it. Learning him with hands and lips, watching and listening and feeling what he was like caught up in the moment, letting him learn her too in the same way. Patiently discovering exactly what made him moan, undone enough to say things in mingled Croatian and English. Him sitting up against the pillows, her on top of him, legs around his waist, rocking together in a slow and sweet rhythm. This was so good too, being able to look into his eyes, able to kiss him, able to touch him and have him touch her. And from how he touched her, she knew he must have dreamed at least some of this night so many times already, just as she had, and it was a thousand times better than she’d imagined. 

When it was over, neither of them hurried to move, his heart thundering against hers, her forehead touching his, not wanting to let the moment go. Finally she lifted her head again, and she found his face a picture of astonished wonder, eyes on her face so intently as if trying to etch this moment, this memory into his consciousness so indelibly that nothing, not time or even another timeline shift, could ever make him forget. He was hers, and she was his, bound together even stronger now. There was no going back from this. Somehow that thought was a comfort rather than anything daunting.

They slept again then, and she woke with the bright morning light peeking in the window. Slipping from the bed carefully and quietly, she padded towards the bathroom, paused and grabbed his cranberry-red sweater from where he’d pitched it last night, untangling it from his undershirt and pulling it on. Tall as he was, the hem of it came down almost to her knees. She’d figured out in the bunker that his sweaters were too comfortable to pass up with their being that big on her, and had guiltily wondered if he’d ever noticed her “borrowing” them occasionally. He must have, but he’d never even joked about it.

Using the bathroom and looking in the mirror, she smiled a little at her reflection, tired but happy, hair a wild, tangled mess from him running his hands through it. 

On the way back to bed, she paused, letting herself simply look at him. Half-curled in on himself, even in a king bed, because he was so used to not being able to stretch out. Dark hair falling across his brow, turned into a rumpled mess by her. He looked younger, all the lines of tension smoothed out in sleep, and she couldn’t help but be grateful he looked so peaceful. They’d both woken each other with nightmares already. It broke her heart hearing the fears, the regrets. But some part of her missed that wicked sparkle, that sheer intensity, of when he was awake. As if he’d sensed her thinking it, he stirred. “You’re staring. Regrets already?” he asked lightly, opening his eyes, pushing up with one hand.

“Regretting what?” She gave him a cheeky grin. “Nothing to apologize for, _dragi._ You were a gentle and responsive lover.”

He answered that with a huff of rueful laughter, covering his face. “You have absolutely been waiting for months to say that, haven’t you?” 

“I’m patient.”

“You are,” he said softly. He gave a slight smile. “The sweater looks better on you than me, by the way. Though I think it would look better yet on the floor again.”

She smiled at the joke, but teasing banter could wait for the moment. “Are you OK?” She looked at him, really looked at him. “The last man I slept with--”

“I’m not Wyatt, Lucy.” He said it calmly, but there was a backbone of flint in his tone, sharp enough to cut if not handled properly. 

She crossed the room again, sat down beside him on the edge of the bed. “That wasn’t what I was saying. Or not all of it, anyway.” She licked her lips nervously, trying to think how to phrase it.

“I told you that you don’t need to feel threatened by Lorena.” Now he sounded wary, and she tried to not want to instinctively retreat and apologize and never go near it again. 

“I try not to be,” she confessed. “But I know it’s...this means something. You’re losing another piece of her here. Because now she’s not the last person you’ve slept with--I am.” She’d been through it in the still moments that morning in Hollywood with Wyatt. Maybe she wasn’t the first woman he’d slept with since Jessica, but a drunken, heartbroken thing didn’t mean much when he pretended they were Jessica. Him admitting that had broken her heart for him. She was the first who really, truly, meant something, where he would have had to let go. For that, she could never dismiss it as something inconsequential. They weren’t meant to be, but that night had meant something to both of them. “And I took that--”

He interrupted her, gaze snapping darkly with something close to temper. “You took _nothing_. It was my choice to be here. To move on. To let that piece of her go.” He calmed down. “But thank you. For...for understanding.” He reached out, gently brushed a lock of the raging disaster of her hair back from her face, tucking it back behind her ear. “And I know what it took for you to trust a widower again after what happened with Wyatt. To let go of being afraid of that. But I’ll still be there tonight.” He leaned in, gathering her in close. “I’ll be there for as long as you want me to be.”

She believed him, and it was another shadow banished, another fear fled. It felt like a weight lifted from her, like she could finally breathe again. Things felt almost absurdly possible. “I...I actually really like this city,” she told him. “I’ll be sorry when we move to the next safehouse.” Not only because she’d heard Minnesotan winters were brutal.

“You can’t fault the music or the food,” he agreed. “And yes, plenty of history to delight your adorably nerdy heart.”

“It’s all that, but it’s...really something special. The way they do things here. It’s America, but it’s its own type of America.” Not the stodgy Anglo-Saxon ways of Rittenhouse or the Founding Fathers. “All the cultures and races that made this place the way it is: black, white, native, Spanish, French, English, Irish, Italian, so many others. And the...passion and excess, I suppose you could put it, that you see them having in even little things. Food and music, yes, but this is a city that made an art form out of something so ordinary as the people _following_ a parade. And there’s the determination they have, the way they keep coming back after impossibly hard times, and finding the good all the same.” They had seen there were still homes in this city, rundown and abandoned for thirteen years, still bearing the X-cross spray painted “Katrina tattoo” from searchers after the disaster marking what they had or hadn’t found inside. And yet it was a city that carried on, proud and joyful, despite its deep scars.

Passionate, a bit excessive, scarred yet determined: that reminded her a bit of someone. Maybe that was why she loved this city too. He gave her that crooked smile that she cherished. “I think they’d call that _joie de vivre_.” He hesitated for a moment, voice oddly soft. “Maybe we should come back here, give New Orleans a try? When it’s all over.”

She hadn’t let herself hope for things for so long after her mother kidnapped her. It was this man who’d kindled that spark again, as she apparently had for him. _That’s what we do. We save each other._ She couldn’t help but smile at the thought, and his suggestion. “I think I’d like that.”

~~~~~~~~~~

She woke, slowly and groggily, and everything hurt. The soreness and fatigue of the wrenching spasms and contractions for seventeen hours felt inevitable, even two days later. She could feel the stitches all too clearly where Danielle’s birth had torn her up a bit. She felt like she could sleep for days, even after two days, and of course, the fact that a newborn didn’t sleep all that well didn’t help either.

But all the same, nothing hurt. She’d broken down when Wyatt looked at their daughter for the first time, holding her as the doctors cut the cord, seeing the look of boyish awe and excitement on his face. She’d turned into an absolute messy puddle of tears when they handed Dani to her, holding her against her chest, when she saw how tiny and helpless this little wizened, reddened creature was. She would have done anything for her. She’d already tried so hard on that. She’d lied and spied and threatened. She’d gotten away from Emma, away from Rittenhouse, and gotten Dani away too. And here their little girl was, safe and sound.

Opening her eyes, she saw Wyatt still sitting there beside her, holding onto the little blanket-wrapped bundle a bit gingerly, looking down at Dani with an expression of such open tenderness that almost made her well up again. So he had wanted to be a father, all along, even though he couldn’t admit that to her. She suspected maybe he hadn’t even been able to admit it to himself. 

He’d been afraid too, yes, because she’d been there, back in El Cruce, and she’d seen Warren Logan’s temper brewing more than once back when she and Wyatt first started dating and before he ran away, could only imagine the hell Wyatt had been through, and was still living. 

So the fear beat out the desire for so long, but here they were, accident or fate. There was plenty to fear still. She was to fragile, so helpless, and they would have to figure all of that out. Then there was what lay between them, broken trust and broken dreams and how they might find their way back from any of that, she didn’t know. Whether they could or would, that was a question for another day. 

She must have stirred in some way, made some kind of sound, because Wyatt looked up at her. “Hey,” he said, adjusting his hold on Dani only slightly, making an awkward low cluck that she realized, trying not to laugh, was him apparently trying to soothe her. _So we’ve both got a lot to learn. Yeah, OK._ “How are you feeling?” He kept his voice low.

 _Like I struggled to push a watermelon through a keyhole, how ‘bout you?_ “Dunno. Did you get the ID on the truck that hit me?” She nodded towards Dani. “I think that’s the one right there.”

He chuckled softly at that. She couldn’t help but smile. “So…” God, they hadn’t been alone together since, when, May? Right before everything went to hell. She steeled herself, as much as her battered and exhausted body and mind could. The first challenge was over with getting Dani out, getting herself out. Now the marathon began, and she might as well know exactly how far she she had left to run. “What’s the story?”

He chewed his lip, bottom teeth fastening in his upper lip in that nervous habit he had when he really, really didn’t want to talk about something. “Do you want to hear this from me?”

“What, is there someone else to hear it from?”

He glanced over her, giving a significant nod of _behind you_ , and she forced herself to roll over, seeing Denise Christopher standing there, clutching a stuffed elephant in her hands. “She’d do, I imagine.”

She could claim Wyatt was passing the buck, and not wanting to talk about the hard realities. He never really had. On the other hand, she could imagine how impossible it would be to deliver the bad news for him, and how she honestly didn’t want that to be the foot they started off on here. Making him the messenger of whatever terms she’d live under now was better left to someone who wasn’t that involved, who could be blunt and not hold back, and who she wouldn’t have to resent for bearing the news. This wasn’t the place for them to start being honest.

She sat up carefully, not wanting to take this literally lying down. Pushing her hair back out of her face, wishing she’d showered, knowing what a nightmare she must look like, she looked at Agent Christopher. “Well, I might as well hear it from you, then.”

Christopher nodded, snagging a chair and sitting down. She gently put the stuffed elephant on the bedside table. “How are you feeling?”

God, could they just rip the Band-Aid off already? But there was something soft and genuinely concerned in Christopher’s eyes. She had kids, didn’t she? She didn’t know whether Christopher or her wife had possibly carried the kids and given birth to them, or if they’d used a surrogate, or straight-up adopted, and that was way, way too personal a question to ask right now, but she took the glimmer of sympathy, and the gift of the toy, as a promising sign. “Tired. But...I’m ready to do what you need from me.” Better to get that out up front, as meek and cringing as it probably sounded. It didn’t matter. She wasn’t proud of what she’d done, how stupid and blind she’d been. “Just please tell me what I can expect,” she burst out. “If you’re going to put me in prison, I get it, but...God, _please_ let me see her, at least...at least once a month?” Pleading for that small a crumb felt so pathetic and desperate, and she wasn’t sure it wouldn’t kill her to accept that little given the thought of ever letting her go would tear her apart already. And some cooler, more objective part of her realized that if she intended to bargain here, she’d started that off as a total disaster by asking for virtually nothing, but right now, she was burnt out physically and emotionally after months of spying under Emma’s nose and then childbirth, and her hormones were a raging dumpster fire to boot. She could presumably be excused for not being tip-top mentally at the moment.

“There’s a federal agent outside your door 24/7,” Christopher said calmly. “That’s both for your protection should Emma come looking, and yes, also to monitor you. You should be released from the hospital later today. I’ve secured space at a federal safehouse here in the city for you and Danielle.”

“Makes sense. I get it. You can’t trust me.” 

“Well, that and a crying newborn keeping everyone up,” Christopher said. She smiled wryly. “I remember those first six weeks.” Her eyes met Jessica’s. “This isn’t a change of circumstances on my part. I wasn’t in favor of you being in the bunker in the first place, to be honest, but Wyatt insisted.”

“You probably should have followed your instincts there.” And of course this time Wyatt would shut up and take it, and she couldn’t blame him for that. 

“I’m going to this time, trust me. You’ll be guarded. You’ll wear a GPS anklet.”

She did push back a little there. “You didn’t make Flynn wear a tracker. The other you, I mean. I know you don’t remember it, but Wyatt can verify that. Even Flynn would probably admit it if you asked.” From what she’d seen, the man has an almost disastrous problem with being too honest.

“I’m going to say it’s because we were in a secured bunker, and he was listed as a fugitive terrorist,” Christopher answered her. “So on both counts, it’s not exactly like he could leave, so he didn’t need a tracker. For you, given you’ll be out some for things like postnatal doctor appointments, the tracker is non-negotiable. You’ll also have no phone, and no Internet.” 

Jessica nodded at that, not terrible surprised. “Can I call my family first and say something about witness protection for why they won’t be hearing from me for a little while? Send them a few pictures? They’ll be expecting to hear a lot right about now, given Dani finally being here. You can listen in, an check the pictures before I send them.”

She thought about it for a moment. “I can work with that. We talk to them first, however, and make sure it’s not Rittenhouse.” She mentally sighed, hating that, knowing it would make her parents and Kevin and Diana worry even more, but fine. Better that than vanishing entirely. But she nodded in agreement.

“Can’t say I love it, but I can accept it. I did what I had to do these last months to protect my daughter. You’re doing what you need to do right now to protect your family too.” She met Christopher’s eyes, pretty sure that the older woman sensed she was talking about Wyatt, Lucy, Flynn, and Jiya, as much as she was talking about her wife and children.

Christopher nodded, accepting that also, and Jessica could almost sense something softening within her. The Rittenhouse programming and the training would have had her lunge for that, push that soft spot to see exactly how much she could get, manipulate and plead. She shook that off only with effort. She was going to play it straight as an arrow this time. Be someone she could respect, someone Dani could respect. The only place she would push like hell would be if they ever threatened her daughter. 

“Wyatt can stay there nights if he likes.” That startled her, and Wyatt too, from the look on his face. “I’m not going to deprive you of time with your daughter, Wyatt, especially not right after she’s born.”

“Yeah, then of course I’m going to do it.” 

“Same protocol, though,” she warned them. “I cut you too much slack before so you could fix your marriage, and it cost us. This time, it’s my rules. You’ll be searched every time you come in. You leave your phone with the agents at the door. And if you get stupid ideas about breaking Jessica out, the black site you ended up in briefly will look like nothing when I’m through with you.” _Wait, what? Black site?_ But she couldn’t ask and interrupt. Not now. But she carefully filed it away mentally as something she and Wyatt really needed to talk about at some point.

Guards, visiting hours, searches, no phone. It was a gentler prison, but a prison all the same. But one she deserved, and one where she could keep Dani, one where Wyatt, if he wanted, could come see their daughter. She wasn’t going to think too much yet on whether he wanted to see her, and what that would mean. She had to get through the immediate future first.

She nodded, unable to speak. It hurt, but it was still a chance, some kind of life. But Christopher wasn’t done yet. “But I apparently took a chance on Garcia Flynn in that other timeline, let him try to make up for his mistakes, and it paid off. And you obviously did some very good work over these last months, under intense pressure. I want to believe you, Jessica, and you’ve given us some shows of good faith here, but I’m not going to apologize that we’re not in a rush here. We’ll see where this goes.” 

That kindled a feeble but real spark of hope. “I want Rittenhouse gone as much as any of you. And I’m going to prove that.”

There might have been a hint of approval in Christopher’s expression. “Good. I look forward to that.” She got to her feet, giving both of them a genuine smile. “Congratulations to you both.” Looked wistful for a moment, like she would have asked to hold Dani if she hadn’t been forced into the “hardass federal agent” mold by the moment, and then she was gone.

She tried to steady herself, suddenly feeling curiously empty. “Here,” Wyatt said, carefully handing her Dani. “Say ‘hi’ to Momma, Dani.” She looked up at him, surprised he’d somehow picked up on her need for that.

He looked right at her, blue eyes soft and anguished all at once. “Can I trust you?”

 _Sure, Wyatt, I just spent the last months risking my life to create another elaborate lie._ “I think whether we can trust each other--if you’re asking about the marriage--is something we’re gonna have to figure out, Wyatt.” There seemed no point in lies or pretense. Not now. “If you can trust me when it comes to Dani, or Rittenhouse, yes.”

He sat down a bit heavily, legs sprawled in front of him. “Good. Because I don’t want to keep lying to you either. Not even by not telling you. So...I’m trusting you enough to tell you Rufus is alive.”

“Wait, what?” No, Rufus had most definitely been dead. Emma was sure of it, and they’d confirmed it with their accusations of her helping cause his death.

“Rufus is alive,” he repeated. “Saw him two hours ago. Eating Chocodiles with Jiya and watching some weird fantasy movie.” 

“How--” She shook her head. “You mean, like, he never died and you all have been screwing with me _this whole time_?” But why wouldn’t he have been in the Lifeboat then? She couldn’t help but laugh. “I get it. A long con for months. My own medicine, huh?”

“No. Rufus actually died. We got him back. Don’t ask me how. But I thought you should know that.” He met her eyes, scared and sad and wistful all at once. “I know what it’s like to find out someone you helped kill is alive again, Jess. It makes the guilt...more complicated. But it makes it more bearable, because maybe now you can make it right. We’ve both got enough shit to feel bad about without you not knowing that.” He reached out a hand, hesitantly, holding it there as if not certain whether to touch her or not.

Not sure of her ability to hold her properly in one arm and support her head, she gingerly put Dani down beside her, between herself and Wyatt. She reached out and took his hand. “We’ve messed things up for so long. Maybe we can make some things right.” No guarantees of exactly what that meant, especially between them, but right now it felt like cause for hope.

~~~~~~~~~~

She’d dreamed of little moments like this for so long. Granted, it wasn’t in a hospital bed, and she couldn’t wait to get him back to the safehouse and a comfy couch, but sitting there on his bed beside him, head of the bed pushed up so they could watch the tiny TV, she unwrapped a Chocodile and handed it to him. He still had on the neck brace, so it was easier for her to open the treat and give it to him, but the sound of enjoyment he made had her smiling all the same. She’d missed that low grumbling hum of contentment that he had.

She’d put on “Black Panther” on her laptop on Netflix, given they’d wanted to go see it back when it came out in January, but given the bunker lockdown, they hadn’t been able to go. “Did you see it already?” he asked, as the credits rolled.

She shook her head, reaching for a Chocodile herself. “I wanted to wait for you.” She smiled, reaching out and nudging his shoulder with hers. “Good news. Denise is a lot nicer about the security.” Garcia had made a snarky-ass remark to Denise at breakfast one morning after the Salem mission about how she obviously _so enjoyed_ aggressively locking people up, glancing around the bunker with a slow, dramatic scan, and suggested she take up a better hobby. It was probably at that moment that it hit Jiya that the man, sarcastic and provocative asshole that he was being, wasn’t wrong. They were prisoners. She’d lightened up a lot since, and it had helped. 

“Yeah, well, I guess when the one person you did let in--one of the two, I guess, though it really is just one, isn’t it? This one’s the Denise I know. OK, yeah, so the one person you let into your super secret bunker backstabs you, kind of makes you question whether the whole Fort Knox routine is necessary,” Rufus said. “So you mean we can go do normal people things like a movie?”

She laughed, feeling him carefully slip an arm around her waist. “Yeah. Yeah, we can go to a movie. Have dinner. Go grocery shopping, whatever. Have a real date night out rather than playing Parcheesi with a set missing two pieces.” She had to hastily clarify, “Did that happen?”

“Yeah, it happened. We replaced it with a couple of coins.”

“So did we.” It was a comfort to hear even such a trivial thing like that was the same. Sometimes they were, sometimes they weren’t, but so far, so much tracked as identical that she felt like she could let out a sigh of relief. 

“Sounds nice,” he murmured. “I...I missed that when we were in the bunker.”

“We’ve both missed a lot,” she whispered, leaning into him, as much as she could given the neck brace. “But we’ll make up for it. I bought Red Dead 2. It’s still in the shrink wrap. When I get you home, nobody else is using that TV for, like, the next week.”

“Damn straight they’re not. I’ve got six months of owed TV time to claim, and I am so claiming it.” She felt the low rumble of his laughter as well as heard it. Then he inhaled, held it for a moment. “We can be honest with each other, right?”

“The definition of honesty didn’t change in the 1880s, Rufus.” She resisted the urge to roll her eyes, but couldn’t help but smile. “Of course we can.”

“Then...why is it I feel like you’re holding something back? You’d started to say something about the DC mission, then we got off on the whole related ‘oh hey, the Garcia from my timeline kind of went through a Punisher phase but he got better’ tangent, and uh, like a good tangent, we never touched back again.”

She’d held this one back, because the six month gap, and the change in Garcia, felt like enough for one already overwhelming discussion. But he needed to hear this too. “I went to DC with you because you were hurt. The Lifeboat only had three seats then, because you, Lucy, and Wyatt were the field team. Not like here, where Garcia was there, and I guess I rotated in occasionally?”

“Yeah, though Denise didn’t like sending you. The heart murmur.”

“That’s not a problem anymore.”

He pushed back from her enough to look at her without needing to turn his head, glancing at the open v-neck of her golden yellow blouse. “You had surgery? I thought that you said they determined when you were a kid it was too risky.”

“No. Three seats in the Lifeboat, and the mass tolerance setting was low to match it. Something...happened with me being in there. It...it changed me. Not any of you three, maybe because you were resistant to it from so much time jump exposure already. But it fixed my heart murmur.”

“Well, that’s great news, isn’t it?”

“It wasn’t the only effect. I have visions, Rufus. Visions of the future.”

“Are we talking 1-900-PSYCHIC here?” She hated his glib tone, remembering how the Rufus she knew had been so dismissive too. Allah, if he joked about Kenney Chesney concerts, she might want to smack him, injured or not.

“I’m serious. It’s really limited, though. I can’t just go ‘Well, show me where Rittenhouse will be.’ It’s like the first silent films. No sound, a series of images.” Stanley had been able to do so much more, but he’d screwed himself up so much, and she hadn’t wanted to risk it being alone in the 1880s, and lose herself forever. “It’s helped us get the edge on some missions.”

“Can you see the future, like, whether or not we’ll win?” He paused for a moment. 

“I can only access the past. I can’t see the future past this moment, here in 2018. But I can see some stuff from future missions, because we’re there.”

“Sounds...useful?”

Some part of her prayed he didn’t ask whether she’d known he would die, because she wasn’t ready to relive that sick feeling of inevitability just yet. “I’m still learning to better control it, and what its limits are. And no, I don’t use it just to spy for fun. Mission stuff only.”

“OK, so you have the superpower of precognition. We’re apparently creating the Avengers here. Hopefully minus Civil War. And minus the Civil War, because I am _really_ not loving living the whole Gone With the Wind nostalgia experience.” That was easy. Almost too easy. Though maybe everything he’d been through had changed his perspective, as it had for her, and it made the visions easier to accept as yet another small thing. “Well, on the bright side, apparently this is like comics. Some characters don’t stay dead. Glad I’m important enough to retcon.”

If he could joke about it, that felt like a good sign. “Of course you’re important. We all needed you back.”

“Thanks,” he said, in a low, hushed voice. “I…” He cleared his throat, sniffled for a moment. She reached for the Kleenex box and handed him one. He blew his nose, and murmured another watery, “Thanks.” She simply held on to him, being there, letting him know he wasn’t alone. “What do we do now?”

Lucy and Garcia had dropped by this afternoon to say hi and check in. Rufus had been sleeping, unfortunately, but they’d let her know what had happened with Jessica. She hoped both she and Wyatt backed off from Rufus for a while, but given Jessica had given birth two days ago and Wyatt hadn’t appeared yet, it felt like Wyatt had acquired enough sense to realize that. Or else someone had warned him. Either way.

By the well-satisfied glow Lucy and Garcia had, the little smiles they kept giving each other, _someone_ had been making good use of increased privacy in the safehouse, and she had the sudden suspicion that yes, they’d moved in together, but hadn’t slept together until now. Good for them. She wasn’t going to resent them being happy, particularly not when her own happiness was back again. 

Jessica had given them an apparent grace period by knocking out Emma’s next mission. The doctors said Rufus would need about six weeks to get back to mostly normal, so that felt like an unexpected gift. She found herself in the somewhat uncomfortable position of being grateful to Jessica Logan for that. “We focus first on getting you better,” she said quietly, reaching out and taking hold of his hand. “And then we all kick some Rittenhouse ass. Because I’m tired of fighting. I don’t want to need to be afraid to lose you again, Rufus. So we go out, and we finish this for good.” She reached for the remote. “But until then, I don’t want to waste a moment without you, so--the next movie is your pick.” 

“I’m claiming the ‘dead for six months’ exemption to the ‘no Christmas before Thanksgiving’ rule.”

It wasn’t like Christmas was a big deal to Muslims, but she had to admit she liked the rituals of it all the same. Her parents had somewhat celebrated it, though it was very definitely more an American cultural thing, enjoying a little bit of giving gifts and some secular songs, than anything to do with Christmas trees or Jesus. It was Mawlid, Muhammed’s birthday, that was their big winter celebration with a religious core, and her parents had kind of wrapped some of the trappings of Christmas into that. She’d liked that, being Lebanese and American all at once. “So what, ‘Muppet Christmas Carol’? ‘Charlie Brown Christmas’?”

“No, ‘Die Hard’. Because it’s not Christmas until Hans Gruber falls from Nakatomi Plaza.” Well, that was a new discovery about him, and she couldn’t keep herself from smiling. There would be chances for many more in the future now. She had faith on that.

Smiling, shrugging, she turned to Netflix again. “‘Die Hard’ it is.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And with that, season 3 comes to a mid-season finale. I'll be resuming with episode 3x08, "The Shotglass Heard Round The World", likely sometime in January. Happy Holidays, and thank you all for reading, reviewing, and supporting this project!


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